Following consultation with the User community in 2018, Diamond Light Source (Diamond) are proposing to build a new Flagship beamline dedicated to X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy as part of the Diamond-II upgrade program. The new beamline, called SWIFT (Spectroscopy WithIn Fast Timescales), will be a high flux beamline optimized for the study of samples under operando conditions, and with the added potential to investigate sample heterogeneities at the 20 μm scale. The beamline will exceed the capabilities of the other XAS beamlines at Diamond for experiments that require an element of time resolution in dilute samples, and will bridge the existing spatial resolution gap between I18 and B18. It is expected that SWIFT will serve a very broad scientific community and that it will also significantly enhance Diamond’s capabilities for industrially relevant X-ray spectroscopy. Diamond firmly believe that this beamline proposal thus offers an exciting and transformational change for our community.
After the recent SWIFT beamline webinar in September, we are now in the process of building the science case. Please give some thought on how you might like to use this new beamline and send 2-3 lines (by Friday 30th October) to the following email address (SWIFT@diamond.ac.uk) explaining how it will support your activities in catalyst design and performance testing. To recap, the beamline is aiming to provide ms time resolution for fast XAFS data acquisition for mechanistic insight (both during synthesis and performance testing) and with the option to obtain this when combined with XRD and/or optical spectroscopy such as Raman/DRIFTS/UV-Vis. Rapid spatial profiling along a reactor bed will also be possible and allow for intimate correlations between catalyst evolution and performance. But please don’t feel limited to what i have highlighted above – any ideas for what could be done with a new ‘fast’ XAFS beamline are most welcome!
Webinars: In order for Diamond to get the input they need, they organised two Webinars (17th of September and 4th of November) with the aim of collecting your views and suggestions in an open discussion. Read more.