NSLS-II Celebrates 10 Years of Operations in 2024

By Denise Yazak, Lisa Miller, and the NSLS-II Team

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NSLS-II staff gathers in the courtyard to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of first light. (Kevin Coughlin/Brookhaven National Laboratory)

Editor’s note: The following article was originally published in Synchrotron Radiation News.

It’s hard to believe that NSLS-II will celebrate its 10th anniversary of first light on October 23, 2024. Since that day nearly a decade ago, the facility has been continuously adapting and improving at an accelerated pace. Looking back, we reflect on the light source’s progress as we move toward a bright future in the next decade of operations.

Growth over a decade: more users, more beamlines, more science

At first light in 2014, NSLS-II started with only 6 beamlines. Today, the facility has grown to 29 operational beamlines that offer users a myriad of unique capabilities. Throughout the past decade, interdisciplinary teams of experts designed and constructed these beamlines through multiple beamline development projects.

beamline development timeline

Timeline for beamline development at NSLS-II. The original NSLS-II project included the construction of six beamlines. Twenty-three more beamlines have been built as part of five other projects.

Over its past nine years of operations, the facility has had more than 15,000 requests submitted for beam time and hosted almost 6,000 users. Users and staff at NSLS-II have written over 3,200 papers, more than 40% of which were published in journals with an impact factor greater than 7. In 2023 alone, NSLS-II saw a record 2,800 proposals submitted—25% of those requesting more than one beamline for their experiments. From the beginning, multi-modal science has been part of NSLS-II’s ‘DNA’. These proposals are written to tackle important science problems that benefit from multiple techniques offered at complementary beamlines. In 2023, NSLS-II hosted a record-setting 1,885 unique users – a 31% increase over 2022. More than 75% of the users came to Brookhaven to work onsite in 2023, showing a renewed eagerness for researchers, especially students and postdocs, to perform their experiments in person.

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Growth in proposals, users, and publications over the past 10 years at NSLS-II.

NSLS-II continues to grow their educational offerings and workshops. The facility hosted more than 50 undergraduate interns, high school students, and visiting faculty in 2023. To accommodate a diverse, growing number of students from around the country, planning is underway for both in-person and remote programs. NSLS-II also continues to host synchrotron courses at different universities and remotely on a yearly basis, including the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and Stony Brook University. Students and faculty aren’t the only ones eager to learn more. Training courses for new users are being hosted in 2024, including bioimaging, EXAFS, structural biology, and cryo-EM.

Accelerator developments

The accelerator is the heart of NSLS-II. Commissioned in 2014, and becoming operational in 2015, the machine and the organization that keeps it running have gone through many changes to ramp up to where we are currently. Starting at a humble 50 mA, NSLS-II’s accelerator is now running at 400 mA and is preparing to move permanently to 500 mA in the 2025–2026 timeframe. In the past decade, the team has been integral in finding solutions to challenges in reaching the current intensity, like reducing the heat load through a coordinated effort of specialists involved in vacuum, machine coordination, diagnostic instrumentation, and electrical engineering.

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Illustration of NSLS-II proposals that requested multiple beamlines in 2023. Thickness of the ribbon is proportional to the number of proposals requesting each pair of beamlines.

One essential, and often overlooked, aspect of managing the accelerator of a synchrotron facility is ensuring its reliability. NSLS-II’s accelerator runs for about 5,000 h every year with a target of ensuring the beam is up 97% of that time. This only gives the accelerator team the wiggle room of about 150 h. To do this, close attention is paid to the accelerator’s most vulnerable systems, like the cryoplant, superconducting cavities, and large power systems.

Increasing the resilience of the accelerator’s most vulnerable systems, including having a sufficient inventory of spares, is one of two main objectives in the team’s plan to bring the facility to a level of ultimate performance. The second part of this plan is the rewarding challenge of adding two harmonic cavities, as well as the accelerator’s fourth (and final) superconducting RF cavity, and a high-power transmitter with its related infrastructure. The team aims to have this completed by 2029.

The accelerator group is also actively pursuing R&D projects that explore new ways of looking at accelerator physics and engineering. One such project conceived at NSLS-II is the “complex bend,” a novel magnet layout that will not only increase NSLS-II’s brightness, but also greatly reduce power consumption by using permanent magnets in a strong focusing ring elements –a goal many light sources are now aiming for.

“It’s time to talk about the future,” said Timur Shaftan, NSLS-II’s accelerator division director. “We are witnessing a large-scale evolution of light sources worldwide. Everyone is upgrading to acquire more capability and capacity. New solutions, like the complex bend, will come in handy not only for us, but the larger light source community.”

HEX: the newest beamline

The High Energy Engineering X-ray Scattering (HEX) beamline is the latest to come online at NSLS-II, taking first light on November 23, 2022. It promises to be a powerful, versatile tool to contribute to clean energy solutions (including research on energy storage and conversion) and to support materials science and engineering. It combines high-energy X-ray diffraction and imaging tools using monochromatic or white beam to enable the study of the microscopic and atomic structures of real materials under working conditions and in real time. HEX construction was made possible with local support through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

“The mission of the HEX beamline at NSLS-II is to help advance clean energy technologies and creative energy storage solutions,” explained lead beamline scientist Michael Drakopoulos. “The beamline enables in situ studies of materials and material assemblies under real operating or manufacturing conditions. HEX also has the capability to study samples that include fully assembled and functioning batteries, fuel cells, and engineering assemblies.”

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Ribbon Cutting Ceremony at the HEX beamline in August of 2022. Pictured: (Back row, L to R) Erik Johnson, then-NSLS-II Interim Director; Eric Dooryhee, previous Hard X-ray Scattering & Spectroscopy Program Manager; Andrew Broadbent, NSLS-II Project Manager; (front row L to R) John Hill, BNL Deputy Director for Science & Technology; Zhong Zhong, HEX Beamline Scientist; Doreen Harris, President and CEO of NYSERDA; and Maurie McInnis, then-Stony Brook University President.

A workshop on HEX’s capabilities was held in October of 2023, attendees from fields of renewable energy and materials engineering came together to hear about the available techniques and scientific potential of the beamline. The HEX team also discussed options for future needs, including instrumentation, sample environments, and data analysis.

“The workshop was planned to teach potential users about the capabilities of the beamline, and it will help HEX staff to prioritize scientific commissioning activities before user operations begin early next year,” said Drakopoulos.

Commissioning experiments were performed on a prismatic battery cell sourced through C4V, a NY-based lithium-ion battery technology company. The battery was scanned vertically and successfully measured using the center of the beamline’s Ge-strip detector. To learn more, see “HEX, A New High Energy Beamline at NSLS-II,” in this issue of SRN.

NEXT-II project: three new beamlines in 2025–2027

The NSLS-II Experimental Tools II (NEXT-II) is a beamline construction project, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences, which aims to deliver three cutting-edge imaging beamlines to NSLS-II: the Coherent Diffractive Imaging (CDI), Angle-Resolved Photo-Electron Spectroscopy and Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering Imaging (ARI), and Soft X-ray Nanoprobe (SXN) beamlines. The NEXT-II project was launched in December 2018 and is expected to be completed by July 2028.

“These beamlines will bring exciting new capabilities to NSLS-II and promote strong scientific synergy with the existing beamlines,” remarked Yong Chu, Director of the NEXT-II project and Manager for the Imaging and Microscopy Program at NSLS-II.

The project is progressing smoothly, with the design of all three beamlines currently complete and most of the beamline components awarded for procurement.

The CDI beamline will provide lensless imaging capability in Bragg diffraction and transmission channels over the energy range from 5 keV to 15 keV and achieve nanoscale spatial resolution. Its sophisticated optical design will provide beam sizes from 1 to 10 µm with highly uniform wavefronts—a critical capability for imaging strain within crystals. It will feature selectable energy bandpass to ensure longitudinal coherence over large samples and provide high flux for small ones.

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(Left) The CDI groundbreaking celebration in August 2022. (Right) The CDI satellite building progress as of November 2023. Photos were taken at approximately the same location.

“The most salient feature of CDI is its large satellite building, necessary to provide simultaneous measurements at two separate Q-vectors with a variable sample-to-detector distance from 0.5 to 10 m in a stable environment,” said Garth Williams, CDI lead beamline scientist. “CDI will deliver a truly unique capability in the US by providing three-dimensional strain imaging of micron-size samples.”

In the last year, the vision of the NEXT-II team began to materialize and take shape. After the site’s groundbreaking was celebrated in August of 2022, the prominent outline of the beamline’s satellite building has become a part of NSLS-II’s distinct landscape. CDI expects to achieve first light in 2025.

The ARI beamline is designed to provide a unique, complete, picture of electronic structure, especially how it is affected by temperature, chemical, structural, magnetic, and atomic variation. It will combine ARPES (band-structure) and RIXS (quasi-particle) information with a 100 nm spot size designed for scanning imaging. ARI will employ many secondary techniques to map out the temperature (liquid–He cryostat), chemical (X-ray photoelectron/absorption/fluorescence spectroscopy), magnetic (X-ray polarization), and atomic (photoelectron diffraction) properties of the sample. It will also have a sample transfer system connecting the measurement and preparation chambers. The use of nanofocusing Kirkpatrick-Baez (KB) mirrors (>1011 ph/s) will enable true nano-imaging, revealing novel electronic structures associated with 2D quantum materials and/or heterostructures.

The SXN beamline offers researchers state-of-the-art soft X-ray nano-imaging/spectroscopy tools with world-leading coherent high photon flux. The 250–2500 eV energy range enables studies of the ­morphology/chemical composition for a wide range of technologically important materials. Both conventional scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM) (2D or 3D absorption imaging) and ptychography (<10 nm resolution) will offer simultaneous measurements of different signals, such as x-ray fluorescence, X-ray absorption, and total electron yield (TEY) absorption.

“With these capabilities, SXN will be beneficial to a wide range of scientific disciplines, such as condensed matter physics and environmental science,” said Andrew Walter, the scientific lead for ARI and SXN.

ARI and SXN will share a straight section with each having its own canted undulator operating independently. ARI and SXN are expected to achieve first light in 2026.

NEXT-III project: plans for future beamlines

NSLS-II received mission need (CD-0) approval from the U.S. Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences in September 2022 to construct 8–12 new beamlines and supporting infrastructure over the next 10–12 years. This exciting project, called NEXT-III, will significantly increase the number of operational beamlines at NSLS-II and will cover a wide range of techniques and research fields.

“The project will be executed in phases,” explained Wah-Keat Lee, Director of the NEXT-III project, “with two to four beamlines being launched every one to two years. Planning in this way accommodates new scientific or strategic priorities that arise over the course of the project.”

For the first phase, two beamlines will be designed and constructed: the High-Resolution Powder Diffraction (HRD) and Quantitative Cellular Tomography (QCT) beamlines. In addition, design of the Advanced Nanoscale Imaging (ANI) and Tender X-ray Nanoprobe (TXN) beamlines will be completed.

HRD will feature advanced and highly automated high q-resolution powder diffraction in the 6–30 keV range, which is an essential tool for structural analysis, with applications across a very broad range of scientific disciplines. This beamline will feature an in situ setup that is geared toward tracking sample dynamics in controlled sample environments as well as a highly automated setup for high throughput operations with minimal manual intervention.

QCT will provide non-destructive 3D imaging in the 200–2600 eV range of whole cells in a close-to-native environment with about 20 nm spatial resolution, bridging the gap between visible light and electron microscopy. A key aspect of QCT will be the ability to correlate the acquired absorption-contrast X-ray images with data from other modalities.

ANI will enable high-speed nano-imaging capability in the 6–25 keV range, utilizing pink or monochromatic beams. The main techniques will be scanning ptychography and full-field projection imaging. One notable technique for this beamline will be laminography to enable non-destructive 3D imaging of microelectronics.

TXN will operate in the 1.2–12.0 keV range and offer nano-imaging across this tender-X-ray range, which will allow K-edge detection from Mg to As and L-edge detection from Ga to rare-earth elements. This will complement the measurements at hard X-ray beamlines that typically cannot access the important edges in elements such as Ca, K, Cl, S, P and Mg.

“Our goal is to build next-generation beamlines that provide a rich end-to-end user experience and maximize scientific impact,” said Lee. “We aim to create beamlines that embrace automation, autonomous experiments, remote operations, flexible data workflows, and AI/ML-­enabled tools. In addition, we must ensure that the facility has robust cybersecurity, with scalable and sustainable solutions for the future.”

These security and technology life-cycle issues are increasingly challenging as the beamlines produce vast troves of data at faster than ever data rates. Data tools (hardware and software) have been evolving at speeds that are much faster than the lifespan of a typical beamline, and cyber threats have become increasingly sophisticated and organized. These considerations drive the need to reassess how NSLS-II architects beamlines and the underlying data and IT infrastructure. Thus, as part of this first phase, the team also plans to develop new software platforms to facilitate the proper incorporation of these new technological innovations.

The next decade: a bright future

Over the next decade, NSLS-II will be busy with beamline operations, construction, and accelerator upgrades, all with the goal of filling the capabilities gaps and enabling new science. To this end, NSLS-II’s science directorates were reorganized in 2023, resulting in the formation of two divisions: the Physical Sciences and Research Operations Division and the Biological, Environmental, and Planetary Science Division. This new structure reflects the tremendous growth of the facility and its dedication to the research it promotes.

“The formation of these divisions will help emphasize the areas of science where the facility wants to have impact,” said Qun Shen, ­Deputy Director for Science at NSLS-II." “Each division will have science goals that explicitly direct their mission, seeking to focus and grow their dedicated research areas.”

While these new tools and upgrades are impressive in their own right, the excitement lies in the science that they will facilitate in the years ahead. These initiatives, along with continued community engagement, will allow NSLS-II to stay at the cutting-edge and deliver world-leading science through the mid-21st century.

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