Energiewende

On the 6th of October the last undulator for the ARAMIS beamline was placed into the SwissFEL tunnel. Thanks to the efficiency and motivation of the different groups involved with undulator preparation, all 12 undulators were assembled, measured and installed in the tunnel between the 2nd of February 2016 and the 6th of October 2016.

Multiferroic composite materials combining ferroelectric and ferromagnetic order at room temperature have great potential for emerging applications such as four-state memories, magnetoelectric sensors, and microwave devices.

The kinetics involved in novel ambient-temperature mechanism for the catalytic oxidation of carbon monoxide by oxygen over a Pt/Al2O3 catalyst is evaluated within a periodic redox operation paradigm using combined mass spectrometry (MS), diffuse reflectance infrared spectroscopy (DRIFTS), and time-resolved Pt L3-edge XAFS. A high-wavenumber (ca. 1690 cm-1) carbonate species are shown to be associated with a room-temperature redox process occurring in a fraction of the Pt atoms present in the catalyst.

In vortex-like spin arrangements, multiple spins can combine into emergent multipole moments. Such multipole moments have broken space-inversion and time-reversal symmetries, and can therefore exhibit linear magnetoelectric (ME) activity. Three types of such multipole moments are known: toroidal; monopole; and quadrupole moments. So far, however, the ME activity of these multipole moments has only been established experimentally for the toroidal moment.

Researcher at PSI (NES/LRT) have brought modern infrared technologies into their large thermal-hydraulic facility, called LINX, to obtain insights into condensation/evaporation process occurring under thermodynamic conditions resembling those of a nuclear power plant containment during a severe accident scenario. In such a scenario, condensation is of prime importance to control the thermodynamic state of the containment. It affects the pressure history, the overall gas (steam, hydrogen) and fission product distribution within this last barrier. Better understanding of these phenomena under accident conditions is essential to properly predict the accident evolution.

Topologically stabilized spin configurations like helices in the form of planar domain walls (DWs) or vortex-like structures with magnetic functionalities are more often a theoretical prediction rather than experimental realization. In this paper we report on the exchange coupling and helical phase characteristics within Dy-Fe multilayers. The magnetic hysteresis loops with temperature show an exchange bias field of around 1.0 kOe at 10 K.

The second Chinese space laboratory satellite Tian Gong 2 was successfully launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on September 15th, 2016 at 22:04 BTC (UTC+8h). Among more than ten instruments onboard it also brought to space the only non-Chinese experiment POLAR - the hard X-ray polarimeter.

Environmentally friendly energy conversion devices such as fuel cells are becoming more and more attractive. However, major impediments to large-scale application still arise on the material side, related to the cost and poor performance of the cathode catalyst. State-of-the-art electrocatalysts are all Pt-based materials, suffering from poor electrochemical oxygen reduction kinetics.

Skyrmions, topologically protected nanometric spin vortices, are being investigated extensively in various magnets. Among them, many structurally chiral cubic magnets host the triangular-lattice skyrmion crystal (SkX) as the thermo- dynamic equilibrium state. However, this state exists only in a narrow temperature and magnetic-field region just below the magnetic transition temperature T_c, while a helical or conical magnetic state prevails at lower temperatures.

Delayed fat digestion might help to fight obesity. Fat digestion begins in the stomach by adsorption of gastric lipases to oil/water interfaces. In this study we show how biopolymer covered interfaces can act as a physical barrier for recombinant dog gastric lipase (rDGL) adsorption and thus gastric lipolysis.

On Thursday 08/09/2016, the first C-band module boosted an electron beam from 150MeV to 390 MeV. This is the first beam acceleration test of a C-band module in PSI and is an important milestone for the project, since the main accelerator consists of 26 C-band modules of the same kind.

On September 13th, the last two modules of the linear accelerator were installed in the SwissFEL tunnel. This means that 26 accelerating modules are installed now. One accelerating module consists of four accelerating structures. In total there are 104 accelerating structures, with a lenght of 2 m each.

The advent of X-ray free electron lasers (XFELs) is opening the ability to reach extremely high photon numbers within ultrashort X-ray pulse durations and is leading to a paradigm shift in our ability to explore nonlinear X-ray signals.

The 21st conference in this series takes place from September 12 to 16, 2016 at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. The cyclotron is a simple and efficient particle accelerator and its invention for the purpose of performing fundamental research dates back to 1929. Ernest Lawrence received the Nobel Prize for his idea in 1939. Today cyclotrons are used in a broad range of applications from large and complex facilities for basic research to highly optimized and cost effective solutions for industrial and medical applications. The series of cyclotron conferences provides a forum for the world leading experts to meet and to discuss technological and physics advancements in the field.

For the first time electrons were accelerated with a SwissFEL C-band module (the first one of a series of 26 modules). The module operated with the nominal parameters that will be used in the last two linac sections. The RF pulse duration was 3 µs, at an RF power of 36 MW from the klystron. This pulse was compressed to 350 ns, yielding a peak power of approximately 215 MW. At these conditions, the energy gain was estimated to be 235 MeV, which is well within expectations.

Industrial transformer cores are composed of stacked high-permeability steel laminations (HPSLs). The performance and degree of efficiency of transformers are directly determined by the magnetic properties of each HPSL. In this article, we show how the neutron dark-field image (DFI) allows for the in situ visualization of the locally resolved response of the bulk and supplementary magnetic domain structures in HPSLs under the influence of externally applied magnetic fields.

We use neutron dark-field imaging to visualize and interpret the response of bulk magnetic domain walls to static and dynamic magnetic excitations in (110)-Goss textured iron silicon high-permeability steel alloy. We investigate the domain-wall motion under the influence of an external alternating sinusoidal magnetic field.

A simple and scalable method for preparation of well-defined chlorine–free iridium oxide nanoparticles active for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) was developed. Operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy indicate that OER activity is strongly related to the presence of iridium hydroxo (Ir–OH) species on the surface of iridium oxide nanoparticles.

An interdisciplinary study conducted at different PSI laboratories (LES,AHL, LRS, SYN) in collaboration with Studsvik AB (Sweden) demonstrates that selenium originating from fission in light water reactors is tightly bound in the crystal lattice of UO2. This finding has positive consequences for the safety assessment of high-level radioactive waste repository planned in Switzerland, as it implies (contrary to previous assumptions) that the safety-relevant radionuclide 79Se will be released at extremely low rates during aqueous corrosion of the waste in a deep-seated repository.By Enzo Curti (PSI-LES)

An interdisciplinary study conducted at different PSI laboratories (LES, AHL, LRS, SYN) in collaboration with Studsvik AB (Sweden) demonstrates that selenium originating from fission in light water reactors is tightly bound in the crystal lattice of UO₂. This finding has positive consequences for the safety assessment of high-level radioactive waste repository planned in Switzerland, as it implies (contrary to previous assumptions) that the safety-relevant radionuclide ⁷⁹Se will be released at extremely low rates during aqueous corrosion of the waste in a deep-seated repository.

On August, 24th 2016, the electron gun accelerated the first photo-electrons in SwissFEL up to the energy of 7 MeV, initiating the beam commissioning phase of the new SwissFEL facility. After several days of RF conditioning, the gun reached the nominal acceleration gradient of 100MV/m at an input power of 17MW with a pulse-width of 1 micro second at an operating frequency of at 2998.8 MHz.