The University of Chicago Research Funding

• Principal Investigators: Mark Rivers, Senior Scientist, Geophysical Sciences Associate Director, Consortium for Advanced Radiation Source;
  Stephen Sutton;
  Peter Eng, Senior Scientist James Franck Institute, Consortium for Advanced Radiation Sources, Argonne National Laboratory;
  Senior Scientist;
  Matthew Newville, Senior Research Associate, Consortium for Advanced Radiation Sources, Argonne National Laboratory
• Start Date: August 1, 2009
• Total Award Amount: $766,502

Project Description

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This proposal seeks ~$767K (~1/3 of the total needed) in funding to implement a canted undulator upgrade for the GeoSoilEnviroCARS (GSECARS) national user facility for synchrotron research. Partial support (2/3 cost) for this upgrade will be separately awarded from NASA and DOE.

The upgrade will provide new capabilities and double available beam time. The upgrade will install a new undulator system in a canted geometry which will, in turn provide two independent x-ray sources. One undulator will be optimized for lower energies (2.3-23 keV) and be dedicated for detailed speciation and microprobe light and heavy elemental compositional research. The other undulator will be configured for higher (5.6-80 keV) energies and will be applied to high-pressure and surface scattering research. The new beamline configuration at GSECARS will be used for high-pressure mineral physics and chemistry, high-pressure non- and nano-crystalline work, hydrothermal fluid chemistry, mineral-water interface biogeochemistry, magma oxidation state research, fluid and solid flow dynamics, and extraterrestrial materials research.

The upgrade will provide access to diamond anvil cell or large volume press high-pressure and high-temperature spectroscopy and crystallography, single-crystal and powder interface diffraction, inelastic x-ray scattering, x-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) spectroscopy, x-ray microprobe analysis, and microtomography.

The facility has broad community usage. GSECARS offers 400+ user-visits per year. The array of research conducted on current beamlines spans a range of geoscience disciplines with considerable societal impacts.

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, NSF Award number: 0841622