Events and E-News

Newsletter

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 CLS E-News               Vol. 5 No. 11               June 30, 2008
www.lightsource.ca     University of Saskatchewan, Canada
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  1. Bill’s Final Bulletin
  2. Vote for Users' Advisory Committee Members
  3. Phase II Beamlines Update
  4. Science Highlight: Coordination nature of aluminum (oxy)hydroxides formed under the influence of tannic acid studied by X-ray absorption spectroscopy
  5. CLS Summer School III- Saskatoon, August 18 – 22, 2008
  6. New Staff and Now Hiring
  7. Planned CLS Website outage - July 5,  2008

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1. Bill's Final Bulletin
Contact: mailto:bill.thomlinson@lightsource.ca 

The Canadian Light Source is maturing into an outstanding facility where excellent research is taking place.

We have accomplished much in this last year, including the installation and first light in three of the Phase II beamlines, routine access to all seven of the Phase I beamlines, a burgeoning industrial science program, the completion of the Phase II building expansion, along with the growing list of highly regarded publications by our user community and staff.  We currently count over 550 registered users and over 1000 user visits to date.

None of these achievements would be possible without the continued dedication and ingenuity of our talented staff. This includes the beamline scientists and industrial liaison scientists working with users and customers, the operations and technical personnel who have worked tirelessly to deliver both a steady supply of highly stable and reproducible beam and new experimental facilities, and the administrative and support personnel who keep things on an even keel.

As this is my last contribution to our CLS E-news, I would like to thank all those who have played a part in making the Canadian Light Source a globally respected facility. It has been a distinct pleasure working with all of you. I am confident that, through your continued efforts, the future of Canada’s synchrotron is very bright indeed.
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2. Vote for Users' Advisory Committee Members
Contact: mailto:helen.nichol@usask.ca or mailto:clsuac@lightsource.ca

A request for you to participate in the Users' Advisory Committee (UAC) online election will be distributed on Monday, July 7. If you do not receive a request to vote by email, please contact mailto:clsuo@lightsource.ca  indicating that you intend to use the CLS for your research and therefore would like to vote on UAC representation.

The UAC provides advice to the Director on the operation and management of the synchrotron and beamlines; represents the interests of CLS users; provides feedback to CLS management on various aspects of the development and operation of CLS; assists CLS in providing feedback to users about CLS-related issues and plans, and hosts the CLS User's Meetings with assistance from CLS.

Do not miss your opportunity to be involved in the decision making process! Visit http://www.lightsource.ca/uac/election2008/ for election details.
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3. Phase II Beamlines Update
Contact: mailto:emil.hallin@lightsource.ca  

CLS Phase II beamlines are progressing well:

VESPERS: A group from Australia has acquired publication quality data, the first such accomplishment on a phase II beamline. The software group is to be commended for their successful implementation of user friendly ROOT based data acquisition software in only one week. The software, and the beamline hardware, functioned smoothly and reliably and enabled this first experiment to successfully conclude in its allotted time.

SXRMB: Commissioning of SXRMB continues, with the monochromator and beamline components performing well with the silicon crystal pair. With the InSb crystal pair, we have not yet obtained design targets for photon flux. A potential optimization will be done while Kohzu is on site for the CMCF2 installation (see below). Further commissioning awaits the completion of the services to the sOE.

SyLMAND: During commissioning, stepper motors controlling the double mirror system went into a race/undershoot open loop failure mode. Repairing the resultant minor damage and reducing the likelihood of a similar occurrence in the future has briefly interrupted the commissioning program on this facility.

REIXS: All beamline (not endstation) components are in-house and the first shared (with Soft X-ray spectromicroscopy) components have been successfully tested with beam. Installation and testing of the remaining components is underway.

BMIT: The last major items are being procured (Ge detector system and large animal positioning system).
With CNSC permission, initial testing and operational commissioning of the equipment in the first two enclosures will begin in the next months.

CMCF2: All of the optical components have been installed. Testing with beam will begin after the monochromator (damaged in shipment and returned to Japan for service) is installed, at the beginning of September. Scientific commissioning should start this year.
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4. Science Highlight: Coordination nature of aluminum (oxy)hydroxides formed under the influence of tannic acid studied by X-ray absorption spectroscopy
Contact: mailto:pmh936@mail.usask.ca  (P.M. Huang)

The effect of biomolecules on the mechanisms of the formation and nature of the transformation products of Al(oxy)hydroxides at the atomic and molecular levels and the impact on their nano-scale surface chemistry remain to be uncovered. In this article, the coordination structure of Al in Al (oxy)hydroxides formed under the influence of tannic acid was studied with X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy. Al K-edge and L-edge spectra show that as the tannate/Al molar ratio (MR) was increased from 0, 0.001, 0.01 to 0.1, the coordination number of Al changed from the sixfold coordination to mixed six-, five-, and/or fourfold coordination in the structural network of the Al (oxy)hydroxides formed under the increasing perturbation of tannic acid. In O K-edge spectra, the intensity of the peak assigned to the p* at 532.1 eV increased as the tannate/Al MR increased, with the spectrum of the Al precipitate formed at a tannate/Al MR of 0.1 being almost identical to that of tannic acid. These results indicate that tannate ligands are incorporated into the structural network of short-range ordered Al (oxy)hydroxides to perturb their structural configuration during the formation of Al precipitates under the influence of tannic acid. With increasing tannate/Al MR, the Al (oxy)hydroxides decreased in amount and developed structural defects and the Al–tannate precipitates increased in amount. The decrease in the coordination number of Al in the Al (oxy)hydroxides is attributed to steric and electronic factors which cause the change in Al–O bonding, because Al is complexed with tannate which has different functional groups and is much larger in size compared with OH and H2O ligands. The surface reactivity of a metal–O bond is related to its covalency and coordination geometry. The findings obtained in the present study are, thus, of fundamental significance in understanding the structural and surface chemistry of Al (oxy)hydroxides and their impact on the transformation, transport, and fate of nutrients and pollutions in the environment.

Hu et al. (2008). Coordination nature of aluminum (oxy)hydroxides formed under the influence of tannic acid studied by X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Vol. 72, pp. 1959–1969.

The online article is available here: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/gca
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5. CLS Summer School III- Saskatoon, August 18 – 22, 2008
Contact: mailto:tracy.walker@lightsource.ca

Designed for students and researchers interested in adding synchrotron techniques to their research skill set, the CLS Summer School program aims to take participants from the basics of synchrotron operation and techniques, through to cutting-edge scientific talks, so that attendees are then equipped to obtain and use synchrotron beamtime.

The Canadian Institute for Synchrotron Radiation (CISR) is providing a few travel grants for Summer School III. Application forms for the school as well as the travel grant are available online.

For more information, please visit: http://www.lightsource.ca/education/summerschool/ 
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6. New Staff and Now Hiring
Contact: mailto:jobs@lightsource.ca

Kevin Anderson joins us as Science Associate for CMCF2 (http://www.lightsource.ca/experimental/cmcf_2.php). Kevin completed his Masters of Science in Physical Chemistry in August of 2006 at McGill University.

Patricia Cason Kent has just received her CAD/CAM Engineering Program diploma from SIAST- Kelsey Campus. Her CAD Seminars class participated in a tour of the CLS and she found it very interesting, applied for a position as Mechanical CAD Technician, and is now an employee. 

Dean Willenborg joins us as a Mechanical CAD Technician. Dean has 12 years of direct work experience in the CAD field and is a welcome addition to CLS.

We are currently accepting applications for the following positions:

For the full position descriptions please go to: http://www.lightsource.ca/careers  
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7. Planned CLS Website Outage - July 5, 2008

On Saturday, July 5, 2008, access to www.lightsource.ca will be intermittent between 6 am and noon, due to a University of Saskatchewan campus-wide upgrade to routers, firewalls, and related equipment.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

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CLS E-News is an electronic newsletter designed to keep users and stakeholders informed about developments at the Canadian Light Source, the national synchrotron research facility located at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon. Current and past issues of CLS E-News are available on the CLS web site: http://www.lightsource.ca/enews/archives.php 
To unsubscribe please go to http://www.lightsource.ca/enews/signup.php. We welcome suggestions for topics and content. Contact us at mailto:clsi@lightsource.ca 
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Last modified: 2012-01-19 17:01:10