News & Scientific Highlights
Ultrafast diffuse x-ray scattering of a hybrid perovskite crystal
Organic–inorganic ‘hybrid’ perovskites have recently gained attention as a low-cost alternative to silicon solar cells. However, many properties of these materials are still poorly understood. In particular, how imperfections in the crystals, which can be both static or dynamic, affect energy transport remains unclear.
Bernina status first summer shutdown
The summer shutdown was used to install more missing hardware. With the new components the Bernina instrument will be already very close to the full design capabilities when the exciting time of user experiments will begin in 2019.
Metteurs en scène avec missions additionnelles
Par rapport aux modèles actuels, les mémoires informatiques fabriquées à partir de certains matériaux novateurs devraient permettre d'enregistrer les informations beaucoup plus rapidement et dans un espace plus restreint, en consommant nettement moins d'énergie. Les séquences filmées au moyen du laser à rayons X montrent ce qui se passe au cœur de ces mémoires informatiques potentielles et comment optimiser les processus au cours desquels le matériau commute entre deux états.
A first glance at the SwissFEL x-rays wave-front
X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFELs) combine the properties of synchrotron radiation (short wavelengths) and laser radiation (high lateral coherence, ultrashort pulse durations). These outstanding machines allow to study ultra-fast phenomena at an atomic level with unprecedented temporal resolution for answering the most intriguing open questions in biology, chemistry and physics.
First time resolved Pilot Experiment by SwissFEL: Semiconductor to metal transition in Ti3O5 nanocrystals
On the 30th of November 2017 SwissFEL saw its first time resolved pilot experiment in the Bernina experimental station of the SwissFEL ARAMIS beamline. A team of scientists from the University of Rennes, ESRF and PSI, led by Marco Cammarata (Univ. Rennes) and Henrik Lemke (PSI), successfully started the experimental phase at SwissFEL. The goal was to study the picosecond dynamics of a light-induced phase transition from a semiconductor to metallic crystal structure in a Titanium Oxide (D).
Nonlinear electron-phonon coupling in doped manganites
We employ time-resolved resonant x-ray diffraction to study the insulator-to-metal transition that is launched via resonant excitation of an infrared-active optical phonon mode in a half doped manganite. We find that the charge order reduces promptly with a highly nonlinear (quartic) dependence on excitation fluence.