ChemMatCARS

ChemMatCARS operates three experimental stations in the areas of advanced small-molecule crystallography, liquid surface and interface scattering, and small to wide-angle scattering at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), the premier undulator-based synchrotron source of high-brilliance high-energy x-rays in the U.S.A. The instrumentation at ChemMatCARS provides information that addresses a broad range of issues in chemistry and materials research.

ChemMatCARS welcomes Dr. Suyin Grass Wang and Dr. Adam Stash to the team!

ChemMatCARS is growing!  This summer, two new additions joined our team.  Prior to working at sector 15, Grass was a Post-Doc at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico.  She is now our Jr. Beamline Scientist for Small Molecule Crystallography and conducting research with Dr. Yu-Sheng Chen.  Adam will be with us for a few months, working alongside Dr. Yu-Sheng Chen and providing his crystallographic expertise.  He is the Leading Research Scientist at Karpov Institute of Physical Chemistry in Moscow Russia.  ChemMatCARS is excited to have both Grass and Adam with us!  

Congratulations to Dr. Yu-Sheng Chen!

ChemMatCARS commends one of our very own beamline scientists, Dr. Yu-Sheng Chen, who has been recognized as a 2016 ACA Fellow this summer! ACA (American Crystallographic Association) chooses fellows based on many factors which include: high level of excellence in scientific research, teaching, professional duties, service, leadership, and personal engagement in the ACA and overall world of crystallography and science.  The program celebrates the great endeavors of ACA members as well as promote their recognition to other partners outside of the ACA network.  The fellows serve as scientific ambassadors to the scientific community and general public in order to progress science education, research, knowledge, interaction and collaboration.  We are so proud of Yu-Sheng and applaud his hard work!  Congratulations Yu-Sheng!

Click here to see the article featured in ACA RefleXions!

2016 APS Neutron and X-ray School

ChemMatCARS participates yearly in teaching for the APS Neutron and X-ray School.  On August 9-10, 2016, 8 graduate students from various institutions in the US came to ChemMatCARS to participate in a two-day hands-on Liquid Surface Scattering experiments and data analyses.  Lectures were presented on the “Scientific Scope of Liquid Surface Scattering Program at ChemMatCARS”, “Geometry of Liquid Surface Scattering”, and “Experimental Methods for Liquid Surface Scattering”.  ChemMatCARS staff members, Wei Bu, Mati Meron, Binhua Lin, and Kimberly Simms conducted the school, with the help of Sean Griesemer, an undergraduate student from The University of Chicago, and Peiyu Quan, an international student visitor from China.

MSI Faculty Development Summer Research Program at ChemMatCARS

In summer 2016, ChemMatCARS inaugurated a four-week Faculty Development Summer Research Program for faculty from Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs).  This year we hosted Dr. Jamiu A. Odutola and his student Samuel Uba from the Department of Chemistry of Alabama Agricultural & Mechanical University (AAMU) for a study of europium-doped lithium strontium iodide scintillators. Lanthanide-doped lithium strontium iodides are promising materials for scintillators. Successful development of these materials relies on a detailed understanding of their solid state structure. The Odutola group’s research goal at ChemMatCARS was to carry out single crystal X-ray studies of the materials to verify and quantify crystallinity of samples grown under various conditions and to determine the crystal structures. The measured structures will aid in the optimization of crystal growth protocols and targeted development for advanced scintillator materials with applications in uncooled neutron and gamma radiation detectors. 

Read more about the Faculty Summer Research experience here!                                            

Scientific Focus

The scientific focus of user activities at ChemMatCARS is the study of structure and dynamics over the range of length scales from atomic and molecular to mesoscopic. The experimental techniques available to the scientific community span a spatial resolution of sub-angstrom to micrometer and a time resolution from 50 ns to minutes. These include:

​High Precision Crystallography to study charge (i.e., electron) densities, bonding, microcrystals, resonant diffraction, high-pressure (up to 10 GPa) single crystal diffraction, and transient state/photo-crystallography.

Scattering From Liquid Surfaces and Liquid-Liquid Interfaces to measure atomic, molecular, and mesoscopic ordering at interfaces using resonant and non-resonant reflectivity, grazing-incidence diffraction and small angle scattering, surface fluorescence, surface diffuse scattering, and fast techniques, such as grazing incidence diffraction in the 1D pinhole geometry.

Small and wide-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS/WAXS) to probe ordering in bulk materials on angstrom to micrometer length scales.

CHEMMATCARS IS SUPPORTED BY THE DIVISIONS OF CHEMISTRY AND MATERIALS RESEARCH,
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
UNDER GRANT NUMBER NSF/CHE-1346572.