News

Cornell scientists have created an evolutionary model that connects organisms living in today’s oxygen-rich atmosphere to a time, billions of years ago, when Earth’s atmosphere had little oxygen.

This groundbreaking work was supported by a collaboration between the PI an collaborators and CHEXS scientist Zhongwu Wang, spanning many years, across the former CHESS “B-line” beamline and the new CHEXS HPBio facilities. This work was enabled by custom diamond anvil cells with large opening angles for simultaneous SAXS / WAXS measurements, and by in-situ spectroscopy techniques deployed at CHESS

Steve Meisburger joins CHESS as a staff Scientist at the FlexX beam line.   Steve comes from the Ando Lab at Cornell, which studies how enzymes work by using a combination of biophysical and biochemical techniques.  We are thrilled to have Steve join the CHESS team!  Follow Steve on twitter: @meisborg

CHEXS scientists and collaborators have developed, prototyped, built, and tested a compact variable-gap undulator with hydraulic-assist driver and innovative hybrid magnetic structure. The sCCU is a more versatile and efficient x-ray source for the next generation of CHEXS beamlines. 

The High Energy X-ray Techniques (HEXT) workshop took place in late May, giving students the knowledge and skills to plan, conduct, and interpret synchrotron experiments, answering questions specific to their research interests in material science.

CHEXS users have directly observed an electronic configuration that is quantum mechanically mixed between the Yb2+ and Yb3+ valence states in the material YbB4. These observations confirm an “intermediate valence” conjecture for this material, which was first hypothesized 50 years ago.

Recent research performed at CHESS presents new insights into the microstructural evolution which occurs during annealing of Mg alloys using in-situ X-ray diffraction. These alloys have potential to make vehicles lighter and reduce greenhouse gases.

Hybrid pixel array detectors (PADs) have proven to be powerful, versatile area detectors for X-ray science. A new prototype would enable significant advances in time-resolved studies of dynamic phenomena.