Quinones, in general, and anthraquinones, in particular, are especially attractive due to their ability to reversibly exchange multiple electrons per formula unit. When used as the active electrode material in a real lithium-ion battery (LIB), crystalline anthraquinone (in powder form) reversibly changes crystal packing as a function of state-of-charge (redox state), with a well-defined voltage plateau appearing concomitantly with new structural phases.

One piece missing though was horizontal position stabilization. With the installation of undulators for A and G line, new beam position monitors were installed on A line which give horizontal information as well as vertical (see related article). This has allowed us to implement horizontal position corrections for the undulator beams serving A1 and A2.

A report describing the fabrication and tests of this new detector, the most recent of which utilized the G3 station at CHESS, is highlighted as the cover art in the current issue of Journal of Synchrotron Radiation (see figure) [1]. The work builds on the group’s pioneering success in developing single- and quad-region detectors that operate in a similar manner, now available commercially through Sydor Instruments (http://sydortechnologies.com/imaging-detectors/x-ray-beam-monitors).

A group from Argonne National Lab is capturing a flood of data using the huge Pilatus3 6M detector, rotating crystal samples at slow speed while continuously (~10Hz) measuring diffraction of high energy (57 keV) x-rays in shutterless operation.

The results are literally a gigabyte of data approximately every 4 seconds (14 GB per minute) or several terabytes per day and at the end of their run could easily reach 30 Terabytes.

Early pioneers in the now-popular "Maker Movement", we are familiar with the positive impact that this type of project based learning can have on both attitudes toward science, and self efficacy in science.

One of the highest-stakes applications is the area of solar cells, where reliable operation depends upon developing stable and energetically suitable hole transporting buffer layers in tune with the electrode and photoactive materials of the solar cell stack.

Conventional methods use liquid nitrogen to cool the protein crystals (with cryoprotectants) so that low-density amorphous (LDA) ice, rather than crystalline ice, forms. Kim et al. developed a procedure known as high-pressure cryo-cooling that uses high-pressure on protein crystals to form high-density amorphous (HDA) ice instead [1].

While the foundational physics of scattering is common to all application areas, individual fields have diverged over the years to develop many specialized tools appropriate to the type of matter under investigation. As science advances, however, areas like structural biology, materials science, and engineering have greater overlap. We organized a dual-track workshop this year aimed at getting soft-matter scientists and biologists in one room to promote exchange.

In a new article published in Advanced Functional Materials (http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adfm.201502412), Princeton Ph.D. candidate Geoff Purdum in Lynn Loo’s group in the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at Princeton and his co-authors shed new light on this issue. In particular, they report reversible access of two polymorphs exhibited by core-chlorinated naphthalene tetracarboxylic diimide (NTCDI-1), an organic semiconductor developed by BASF.

CHESS is a high-intensity x-ray source funded by the National Science Foundation that is operated and managed by the University, driving research in fields spanning from electron behavior in a superconductor to arsenic poisoning in shrimp.