Chris Glover: Australian XAFS: Past, present, and a Br-ght future

The Australian XAFS community started from small beginnings and currently, XAFS is one of the most oversubscribed techniques at the Australian Synchrotron. The community has been fostered by access to facilities; initially the Australian National Beamline Facility (ANBF) at the Photon Factory, to more recently the XAS beamline at the Australian Synchrotron. The ANBF was a simple and versatile, non focussed bend magnet beamline, which was retired in ~ 2010. The XAS beamline is a Wiggler based, focussed beamline, with much greater flux and high photon energies, and has been operational since 2007. User demand has resulted in two new beamlines, currently under construction at the Australian Synchrotron – the Medium Energy X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy Beamlines (MEX 1 and 2). These beamlines share a bend magnet, and are aimed to cover the Tender and medium energy range with differing beamsizes – from microns’s to mm’s. MEX will be equipped with 4 endstations in total, including a microprobe, a 5 crystal Rowland circle spectrometer and a custom low energy X-Ray spectrometer.

I this talk, I will briefly describe the past, present and the bright future of XAFS in the Australian context. I will briefly summarise the ANBF, the capabilities and performance of the XAS beamline and highlight the scientific opportunities and complementary nature of the new MEX beamlines.

References:

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20350
2. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/cn200097s
3. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.biochem.5b01136
4. https://www.ansto.gov.au/user-access/instruments/australian-synchrotron-beamlines/x-ray-absorption-spectroscopy
5. https://www.ansto.gov.au/research/facilities/australian-synchrotron/project-br-ght