Dedicated to static and dynamic condensed matter chemistry and materials science. Learn More About ChemMatCARS
ChemMatCARS
Used to investigate dynamical and structural properties of surfaces and interfaces in a variety of liquid and solid systems. Learn More About Liquid Surface At ChemMatCARS
Liquid Surface/Interface X-ray Scattering
Uses a "rapid setup" crystallography facility that allows us to rapidly switch operation to the single-crystal instrument. Learn More About Crystallography At ChemMatCARS
Advanced Crystallography
Overview
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.
2017 Graduate Student Research Award at ChemMatCARS (GSRAC)
Our first recipient this year:
Daniel Amoanu,
University of Illinois at Chicago
Daniel Amoanu (standing) presenting his research to ChemMatCARS
ChemMatCARS launched its summer development program, GSRAC, May 8, 2017, aimed at exposing graduate students to the current synchrotron techniques and data analysis procedures performed at our facilities here at APS. Daniel is a Chemical Engineering PhD student from the University of Illinois at Chicago studying the ordering of passivated gold nanoparticles at an electrified liquid-liquid interface and has been experimenting at Sector 15 for the past 5 years under the supervision of Prof. Mark Schlossman. Under the supervision of Mrinal Bera and Wei Bu, Daniel made progress in his analysis of x-ray reflectivity and GISAXS data to address the interactions responsible for nanoparticle position, transport, and ordering at the interface.
It was a pleasure hosting Daniel at ChemMatCARS for this program and we look forward to next year’s development program!
ChemMatCARS welcomes International Student Visitor,
Seiji Katakura!
Seiji is a Ph. D. student from Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan. He studies interfacial structures of ionic liquids as well as air, liquid, and solid interfaces where he mainly uses molecular dynamics simulation and electrochemical measurements. Seiji joined ChemMatCARS in May 2017 and will learn about x-ray reflectivity at the liquid-liquid interface, as well as measuring structures at the water interface during his three month visit.
Welcome Seiji! We are thrilled to have you!
Mrinal Bera
joins ChemMatCARS as our new Anomalous Small-Angle X-ray Scattering (ASAXS) Scientist!
Mrinal joined ChemMatCARS in March 2017 to assist with developing the ASAXS technique at 15ID-D SAXS/WAXS beamline at APS. The purpose of ASAXS development at 15ID-D is to create an understanding of charged polyelectrolyte systems. This development is funded by the Institute of Molecular Engineering (IME) at the University of Chicago. Before joining ChemMatCARS, he spent a year at European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) as a beamline scientist at the DUBBLE beamline (BM-26). Mrinal's research interest includes probing interfacial and bulk soft-matter interactions in nanomaterials, polymers, and two-dimensional materials.
ChemMatCARS is pleased to have Mrinal onboard. Welcome!
University of Chicago Lab Schools Tour at ChemMatCARS
On February 28, 2017, ChemMatCARS participated in hosting a tour for second- year chemistry students from the University of Chicago Lab Schools, along with BioCARS and GSECARS. Students were given a brief overview of APS, followed by an overview of CARS by Mark Rivers. After the introductions, students were separated into two groups and given brief presentations by Wei Bu and Suyin Wang about liquid surface and crystallography techniques used here at ChemMatCARS.
ChemMatCARS welcomes International Student Visitor,
Tieyan Chang
Tieyan Chang is a visiting Ph.D. candidate from Xi’an Jiaotong University in China. Tieyan’s studies focus on phase transition in magnetic materials and the magnetostriction in the vicinity of morphotropic phase boundary in ferromagnetic systems. While here at ChemMatCARS he is exploring crystal structure change during ferromagnetic phase transition using high-resolution single crystal diffraction and charge density under Dr. Yu-Sheng Chen’s direction. Tieyan arrived at ChemMatCARS January 11, 2017 and will be staying until September 2018.
Welcome Tieyan!
Congratulations to ChemMatCARS user
William Rock!
William Rock (left) pictured with Deputy Lab Director at ANL, Al Sattelberger (right)
Congratulations to William Rock on being one of five, 1st place poster award winners selected at Argonne’s ninth annual Postdoctoral Research and Career Symposium. The event was held in Fall 2016, and displayed the scientific research of post-doctorate scientists, engineers, and graduate students. The Symposium creates a networking atmosphere and connects industry and government recruiters with brilliant individuals across the nation. Posters were judged based on overall appearance and quality, topic organization, clarity and significance of illustrations, and knowledge of topic. William studies interfacial reactions involved in the chemical separation of heavy metals. At Sector 15, he uses grazing incidence diffraction (GID) to probe monolayer surfaces as well as anomalous x-ray reflectivity and x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to study the structure of heavy metals at the interface. William’s winning poster presentation was entitled, Molecular-Scale Investigation of Anion Adsorption Competition at a Charged Langmuir Monolayer
Congratulations William! You’ve done a phenomenal job!
Click here to see the Argonne Today post!
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.
Exciton Migration and Amplified Quenching on Two-Dimensional Metal–Organic Layers
Published 05.03.2017
The dimensionality dependence of resonance energy transfer is of great interest due to its importance in understanding energy transfer on cell membranes and in low-dimension nanostructures. Light harvesting two-dimensional metal–organic layers (2D-MOLs) and three-dimensional metal–organic frameworks (3D-MOFs) provide comparative models to study such dimensionality dependence with molecular accuracy. The scientists at the Xiamen University, China and the University of Chicago, USA report the construction of 2D-MOLs and 3D-MOFs from a donor ligand and a doped acceptor ligand. These 2D-MOLs and 3D-MOFs are connected by similar hafnium clusters, with key differences in the topology and dimensionality of the metal–ligand connection. Energy transfer from donors to acceptors through the 2D-MOL or 3D-MOF skeletons is revealed by measuring and modeling the fluorescence quenching of the donors. We found that energy transfer in 3D-MOFs is more efficient than that in 2D-MOLs, but excitons on 2D-MOLs are more accessible to external quenchers as compared with those in 3D-MOFs. These results not only provide support to theoretical analysis of energy transfer in low dimensions, but also present opportunities to use efficient exciton migration in 2D materials for light-harvesting and fluorescence sensing.
