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

Congratulations Qi Wang! 2018 APS Student Poster Prize Winner

NSF's 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

2018 Graduate Student Research Award recipients: Jesse Murillo from the University of Texas El Paso and Oscar S Hernandez Daguer from University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez

Jesse Murillo (left) and Oscar S Hernandez Daguer (right)

NSF's ChemMatCARS hosted two graduate students for this year's Graduate Student Research Award at ChemMatCARS (GSRAC).  The GSRAC program facilitates PhD research experiences and enhances graduate students understanding of synchrotron x-ray techniques at APS.  During their visit, Jesse studied crystallography techniques while Oscar studied liquid surface scattering. 

2018 Faculty and StudentResearch Award recipients: Professor Jie Ling and his student Dawanya Burgess from Claflin University

Professor Jie Ling (left) and his student Dawanya Burgess (right)

This year, NSF's ChemMatCARS selected two faculty and student research teams to participate in the Faculty and Student Research Award at ChemMatCARS (FaSTRAC) program, which collaborates with Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs).  Professor Jie Ling and his undergraduate student Dawanya Burgess are from Claflin University.  During the 4-week program, Professor Ling and Dawanya studied crystal structures of non-linear optical (NLO) crystals made from transition metal tellurates/tellurites and lanthanide metal organic frameworks using single crystal x-ray diffraction.
Congrats Jie and Dawanya! 
Until next time....  

2018 REU Tour 

Dr. Wei Bu (far left) and Dr. SuYin Wang (far right) with REU tour group

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

Professor Raymond Tu (left) and his student Ankit Kanthe (right)

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.

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, NSF's 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, NSF's ChemMatCARS has participated in the SCSW conference and looks forward to next year’s tour!

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.