LEAPS

League of European Accelerator-based Photon Sources

Tutti Johansson Falk

The Battery Challenge

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LEAPS Position paper for the European Battery 2030+ Roadmap is now published.

In a world of climate change, energy storage and distribution in the form of electrical power are a key challenge to be addressed and tackled in the ambitious transition of our societies towards fossil-free energy supplies. Batteries have been identified as one of the major technological challenges in the next decade as they are the core devices to make more efficient use of green energy. Next-generation energy storage must be based on a diversity of chemistries and architectures that allow batteries to be tailored for specific applications1,2. In turn, the knowledge-based research on new and better battery systems is of fundamental and strategic importance for Europe and the whole world. This research is going to be driven by the ultimate goal to achieve mass production of battery devices adapted to transport, urban and countryside living models, industrial value chain and services to the citizens including healthcare and ageing society. Below you find the position paper.

LEAPS – Battery 2030+ RoadmapDownload

X-rays shine again at the ESRF

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  • Aerial view of the ESRF, Credit: ESRF/P.Jayet
  • X-rays shine again at the ESRF, Credit: ESRF

On 30 January 2020, beamlines saw first EBS beam, one month ahead of schedule.

It’s a great achievement for the EBS project. After reaching in the last two days stable operation conditions of the new EBS storage ring at 100 mA injection current, 26 out of 27 Insertion Device beamlines opened their front-end with 5 mA stored electron beam current.

The EBS X-ray beam – on all these beamlines, at distances from the source varying from 45 to 160 m, depending on the specific beamline – was found within fractions of millimetres from its position as measured in December 2018 before the start of the shutdown.

“The beam shape is extremely good and almost cylindrical as expected, with sub-millimetre size at 100 m from the source!  X-rays are shining again in the ESRF Experimental Hall!”,says Francesco Sette, Director General.

“This has never been seen before”, said Harald Reichert, Director of Research. “We’ve taken out a 1km long machine, we have put a new one in and we have 5km of beamlines to align. And it is working straight away, it is pretty amazing”, he adds.

“This shows how the teams have worked in tune with each other to accomplish a real feat, especially we are very grateful to the alignment group for a perfect job. This success means that we are very optimistic for the restart of the scientific experiments”, adds Jean Susini, Director of Research.

EBS is 150M€ upgrade programme to replace the ESRF third-generation source with a brand-new machine that will boost the performance of the X-ray beams by 100, giving scientists new research opportunities in fields such as health, energy,  environment, new materials. The EBS revolutionary lattice has already been adopted by other synchrotrons around the world, including the United States, Japan and China.

Here you will find more information about ESRF

Caterina Biscari new Chair of LEAPS

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As of 1 January 2020 LEAPS has a new chair, former vice-chair Caterina Biscari, Director ALBA Synchrotron. The symbolic LEAPS baton was handed over to her by the outgoing chair Helmut Dosch at the General Assembly in November.

New vice-chair is Leonid Rivkin, PSI together with Helmut Dosch, DESY.