Recent Outreach Activities

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the operation of the UK’s XMaS (X-ray Materials Scattering) user facility at the European Synchrotron Research Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble. It has been directed for all that time from Warwick and Liverpool University Physics Departments and has provided hundreds of UK scientists (and many from further afield) with the opportunity to do leading research in a truly world-leading international centre.

XMaS came about when the first of the world’s ultra-bright synchrotrons was being designed and built in Grenoble, France in the early nineties. The ESRF’s bending magnets were originally designed to simply steer the electron beam around the synchrotron ring between the newly developed insertion devices. It was soon realised that they were a potent source of synchrotron radiation which could exploited as new beamlines if funded by national groups. The UK took advantage, with Malcolm Cooper, here at Warwick, and Bill Stirling, first at Keele and then Liverpool, asked to devise a plan and to bid for EPSRC funds. Needless to say the first back-of-the-envelope designs were, with hindsight, rather naive and embarrassingly under-costed but detailed design work by our small project team generated a viable blueprint, which has since stood the test of time.

When it opened for users in the autumn of 1997 it was never, in our wildest dreams, envisaged that it might be still operational 25 years later. Of course XMaS has undergone a continuous programme of improvement and upgrades over the years with including developing sophisticated sample environments and advances in x-ray metrology. A major refurbishment was necessitated by the recent comprehensive upgrade of the ESRF and as a consequence we now have what is virtually a new beamline and fit for purpose for many years to come.

Initially the science case for the beamline was devoted for the study of magnetic materials, very much in vogue in the 1990s. In fact the acronym XMaS stood for X-ray Magnetic Scattering but the facility has since evolved to encompass a broader materials programme (polymers, liquid crystals, catalysts, etc.) using a variety of techniques (spectroscopies, wide and small angle scattering etc.). The facility has four permanent staff and two postdocs on site, who carry out their own research as well as help the visiting research groups run a very diverse range of experiments. Following the retirement of Malcolm Cooper in 2010, XMaS has been led from Warwick by Tom Hase with admin support from Sarah Jarratt.

The Physics department will be hosting an event at the Warwick La Palma Observatory facilities today, bringing together key Warwick staff, delegations from the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), and the observatory host institution, the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). The visit will showcase the Warwick facilities and further develop the unique opportunities provided by our instrumentation platform at one of the best observing sites in the world, with a particular focus on the topical area of Space Domain Awareness, an emerging activity at Warwick.

In2science is a summer programme for year 12 students to gain insight into STEM careers and research. There is a wider participation element, as students are selected based on criteria indicating a disadvantaged background, and are all from non-fee paying and non-selective state-maintained schools. After applying to the scheme in April, Dr Wing Ying Chow found out in June that she had been matched, and hosted four students for a week in August. The students came from schools in north Coventry and the outskirts of Birmingham. They have all faced various levels of disruption due to COVID and this is their first work experience.

Solid-state NMR was a completely new technique to all of the students. That didn’t stop them from getting some hands-on experience: they packed a rotor and ran some experiments on the national high-field GHz spectrometer. During the placement, the students started to make connections between the A-levels they are studying, whether maths, chemistry, biology, or physics, with what is going on in the lab and in the magnet.

Ying received plenty of help and support in hosting, especially for tours and lab visits. As a new Assistant Professor without a group of her own, she found it was a great way to get to know more of the department and the university, “It was not only gratifying to see the students becoming more confident and outspoken over the week, but I also learned a lot from finding new ways to explain scientific concepts at Y12 level.”

Read Ying’s blog about the programme.

Find out how to host a summer 2023 placement.