Bulletin

Issue: May 2005

News

Towards Australia’s new Synchrotron

Workshop on Spectroscopy and imaging in Italy

La Trobe University Emeritus Professor of Physics, Robert Leckey, recently led a group of 11 Australian synchrotron scientists to the 2nd Italian-Australian Workshop on Future Directions of Spectroscopy and Imaging with Synchrotron Radiation, at Trieste, Italy.

Professor Leckey organised the event with Professor Kevin Prince, an Australian working with the Italian Synchrotron source ELETTRA. Both had organised the first workshop in 2003 at Lorne.

It was such a success that the second was funded generously by the Australian Department of Education, Science and Technology, through the International Science Linkages Programme, the Victorian Department of Industry, Innovation and Regional Development, and ELETTRA.

Professor Leckey said the major theme was imaging with synchrotron radiation, which was particularly important to Australia, given the synchrotron currently under construction at Clayton.

Both Professor Leckey and La Trobe University Queen Elizabeth II Research Fellow in Physics, Dr Andrew Peele, made significant contributions to the workshop proceedings.

Dr Peele discussed experimental methods and numerical algorithms for image analysis during a session on methods for the recovery of structure from the diffraction patterns of non-periodic objects.

The workshop expressed support for a third edition of the event, timed to coincide with the opening of the Australian synchrotron in 2006.

La Trobe and synchrotron light

La Trobe University’s Centre for Materials and Surface Science is involved with the Australian Synchrotron Project, currently under construction at Clayton, and research with synchrotron light.

The recent completion of the synchrotron building was celebrated with a community open day which attracted about 12,000 visitors.

A synchrotron is a large machine about the size of a football field producing intense beams of light which have a spectrum from infrared to X-rays, and up to a billion times brighter than conventional X-rays. Many materials can be investigated non-destructively and product solutions can be derived from the analyses.

‘We are looking forward eagerly for the time when the synchrotron comes into operation in Melbourne,’ says the director of the Centre for Materials and Surface Science, Dr Paul Pigram, an associate professor in the Department of Physics.

He said that currently, researchers in the Centre conduct experiments at synchrotron facilities in Europe, Asia and North America.

For example, members of his own group used a synchrotron in Taiwan to characterise micro-patterned conducting polymers and to analyse the surface of semiconductors.

‘It is the intensity and “tuneability” of synchrotron light that make these projects possible,’ Dr Pigram says.

The Victorian Government’s Synchrotron Access Program and the federally-funded Australian Synchrotron Research Program support a project through the La Trobe Centre to assess the chemical state of chromium in contaminated soils.

This project is conducted by the Centre’s Dr Peter Kappen in collaboration with the company, Environmental Resources Management (ERM, Melbourne). Chromium, in certain forms, poses health risks. To measure these levels, Dr Kappen conducts a series of experiments at the synchrotron in Hamburg, Germany.

The results are expected to make land management and remediation of contaminated land more cost effective.

‘Our researchers identify issues with surface properties and work out ways to address those issues. If companies that produce chromium don’t characterise the surface of a product, they may be unaware there is a problem,’ Dr Pigram said.

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