NSF's ChemMatCARS

NSF's 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.

News and Announcements

2018 REU Tour 

NSF's ChemMatCARS, along with the BioCARS and GSECARS, hosted the Reserach Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) tour.  Students from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Ohio State, and the University of Chicago were given the opportunity to learn about liquid surface scattering and crystallography techniques practiced at sector 15.

2018 Faculty and Student Team Reaserch Award at NSF's ChemMatCARS (FaSTRAC) recipients: Professor Raymond Tu and his student Ankit Kanthe from CCNY

NSF's ChemMatCARS hosted Professor Raymond Tu and Ankit Kanthe from The City College of New York for this year's FaSTRAC program.  During their visit, the duo conducted X-ray Reflectivity experiments of proteins with and without the surfactant present in order observe the folding/unfolding and phase behavior of the above mentioned systems at the air-water interface.  Other colleagues from CCNY joined them for beam time to run additional liquid surface experiments.
Congrats Raymond and Ankit! It was a pleasure.

Congratulations Qi Wang! 2018 APS Student Poster Prize Winner

ChemMatCARS congratulates our user, Qi Wang, for being chosen as the 2018 APS Student Poster Prize winner at the APS User Meeting.  Qi's poster and presentation, entitled, "Probing Adsorption Interactions in High Valence Metal-Organic Frameworks by In Situ Single-crystal X-ray Diffraction", received a perfect score!

Congratulations Qi Wang! Job well done!

Recent Outreach Activities

USF & NSF's ChemMatCARS University of Chicago Small Molecule Crystallography School

NSF’s ChemMatCARS and the University of South Florida (USF) hosted a workshop on small molecule X-ray crystallography on April 26-28, 2018 at USF. 24 participants including graduate students and post-docs, from 9 institutions across the US, attended the workshop. 

Workshop webpage: http://chemistry.usf.edu/crystalschool/index.aspx

2018 Science in Search of Women Conference

Women In Science and Technology (WIST) at ANL hosts the Science Careers in Search of Women (SCSW) conference every year inspiring young women to pursue careers in science.  The conference includes lectures, tours, career booth exhibits and mentoring.  On April 19^th, ChemMatCARS hosted 30 female high school students at the 15-ID beamline.  They got the opportunity to tour the beamline and learn more about the Liquid Surface Scattering, Advanced Crystallography and Anomalous Small Angle X-ray Scattering techniques. 

Every year since 2016, ChemMatCARS has participated in the SCSW conference and looks forward to next year’s tour!

Hoffman Estates High School Students visit ChemMatCARS for Exemplary Student Research Program 

On March 2, 2018, ChemMatCARS conducted our Exemplary Student Research Program (ESRP) with the students from Hoffman Estates High School (HEHS).  ChemMatCARS has been hosting this program since 2016 in collaboration with Wayne Oras, Jr., the Applied Technology instructor from HEHS.  Students performed hands-on experiments for their proposal entitled, “ESRP: Characterizing the Structure of Self-Assembled Lead (II) Sulfide Nanoparticle Superlattices Based on Variable Ligand Surface Coverage”.  This year, students had the opportunity to work with our Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) beamline scientist, Mrinal Bera, at the 15-ID beamline.  Students were assigned 2 consecutive shifts, starting at 4pm on March 2^nd and ending at 8am on March 3^rd.  During their beamtime, they prepped samples, ran scans, and collected data.  We are excited for next year and can’t wait to see their results!

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.

Anomalous Small Angle X-ray scattering (ASAXS) to probe element specific structural information from materials in the length scales of few nanometers to hundreds of nanometers.

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