Beamline 121 Welcomes First Users

An important milestone for Diamond’s Inelastic X-ray beamline 121 was reached in early October as its first users were welcomed at the Harwell-based facility. 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.

"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.”

Principal Beamline Scientist, Kejin Zhou, said: “We are delighted to welcome the first users to Diamond’s RIXS beamline. All that has been achieved is as a result of the hard work from the entire team both on the beamline and at Diamond as a whole.”

“Having accompanied the development of I21 as project sponsor, I am thrilled to see this fantastic instrument starting to produce world-class science”, says Jorg Zegenhagen, Physical Science Coordinator at Diamond.