First users welcomed to I21

Diamond’s Inelastic X-ray Scattering beamline (I21) has celebrated an important milestone, as it welcomed its first users.

This new beamline is dedicated to Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS) producing highly monochromatised, focused and tunable X-rays. It is suited to investigate the electronic, magnetic and lattice dynamics of samples particularly those with magnetic and electronic interactions.

Figure 1: The I21 beamline time with first users from university of Bristol.

"Considering the exceptional progress of the RIXS technique in the last few years, and the unique capabilities that I21 will offer to our UK and international community, we are extremely pleased to celebrate first users on I21,” says Laurent Chapon, Physical Sciences Director at Diamond. “Dr Kejin Zhou and his team, Diamond's engineers and all support groups have worked incredibly hard to deliver this new beamline with an energy resolution and count rates already very close to the expected final targets. This is just the start of a great adventure, and we are looking forward to exploiting I21's high-resolution for measurements of local and collective excitations in solid state materials. Our future investments to extend the energy range as well as delivering a polarimeter will reinforce the position of I21 as a world-leading facility.”

The University of Bristol research group including Hannah Robarts, a joint PhD student with Diamond and the University of Bristol, are examining high temperature superconductors, in particular measuring the magnetic excitations in a single crystal of La₂CuO₄.

Stephen Hayden, Principal Investigator of the group says, “With this ultra-high resolution RIXS experiment on La₂CuO₄, we hope to shed light on high temperature superconductivity using the I21 beamline. As this new beamline becomes operational, I feel this is the start of a new journey with RIXS technique.”