8

NEWS

March 2021 ESRFnews

Attendees Zoom to annual meeting Almost 900 people registered for the ESRF s 31st User Meeting, triple the number of recent years. In the first online-only event in the facility s history, users discussed everything from the preservation of historic artworks to the pathologies of global pandemics almost all from the comfort and safety of their own homes. Kicking off the plenary session,

Edith Heard, the director-general of the EMBL, gave an invited talk on the status and future of women in science, in which she pointed out that at the current rate of progress it would take 258 years to close the gap between men and women in research; currently, globally, just 20% of people in leadership positions in the life sciences are female. Science is sexist, she said, and warned that the consequences of the pandemic could be worse for women s careers, as they default to traditional roles. I had not realised how important it is to talk about these things as a young scientist, she continued, adding that she had taken her current position to set an example . After a vibrant talk by Letizia

Monico of the CNR Institute of Chemical Science and Technology in Perugia, Italy, on the use of synchrotron X-rays to explain why artists pigments change colour over time, participants received a facility report from the ESRF directors, including the new director of the accelerator and source division, Qing Qin. It has been a great honour for me, he said. This is a fantastic new machine for the synchrotron radiation community. Francesco Sette, the ESRF director-general, explained to everyone the strategy adopted by the ESRF since last March in response to the pandemic: the prioritisation of safe working conditions, and the restart of user- service mode for a maximum number of beamlines. (All operational beamlines now have remote access.) He also presented the research and development and challenges for 2021 2025 to keep science and innovation at the forefront, with new state-of-the-art beamlines BM18, ID29, ID03 and ID18, which will be delivered in 2021, 2022, 2023 and

2024, respectively a far-reaching accelerator programme and a data programme to fully exploit the performance of the EBS. Sette also reported a great level of achievement in the past year: 616 user experiments, a steady increase in ERC grants, and results exploiting the new source that are already allowing scientists to see things that humanity has never seen before . No other machine can operate with these parameters today, he said.

Dreams made possible Later in the plenary session, Irene Margiolaki of the University of Patras in Greece gave an insightful lecture about X-ray powder diffraction, a bioscience technique that has transformed over the past decade from an impossible dream to a respectable method , able to observe phase transitions, characterise bulk pharmaceuticals and detect ligands in protein ligand complexes, among other things. Afterwards, Pablo Beato of the Danish catalysis company Haldor Topsoe explained how he and his colleagues have been pioneering synchrotron techniques to study the behaviour of catalysts, particularly in their natural working environments, for more than 40 years. Finally, this year s Young Scientist was revealed (see story, right). There was a lot more to the 31st

User Meeting than the plenaries. One day was devoted to posters and tutorials, the topics of which ranged from the fundamental principles behind synchrotron techniques to the best ways to communicate scientific results to a wider audience. A third day was given over to three user-dedicated microsymposia: how structural studies can help seek remedies for viral disease; understanding biomineralisation; and the physics and chemistry of actinides. Despite taking place on Zoom,

the meeting went smoothly and social media was abuzz with messages from users embracing the unusual format with one or two exceptions. There are certain aspects of it that I cannot help missing, Tweeted one participant, alongside some emojis for bread, cheese and wine.

New path to phosphine Users of the ID27 beamline have discovered an inorganic route for the synthesis of phosphine, as well as a crystalline van der Waals compound never observed before for any element in group 15 (the nitrogen group) of the periodic table. Matteo Ceppatelli of the European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy and ICCOM CNR in Florence, Italy, and colleagues employed X-ray diffraction at ID27 together with a separate spectroscopy analysis to show that, at temperatures of 1000 K and pressures of 1.2 GPa, phosphine is generated in a direct reaction between black phosphorus and molecular hydrogen; the crystalline van der Waals compound ((PH3)2H2) materialised from the interaction between phosphine and molecular hydrogen at even higher pressures (Nat. Commun. 11 6125).

The researchers believe that the generation of phosphine is important, because it represents a new analogue of the famous Haber-Bosch reaction, in which ammonia is synthesised from molecular hydrogen and nitrogen. Meanwhile, they say that the new crystalline van der Waals compound, having X2H2 stoichiometry, could shed light on the phase-I structure of (H2S)2H2, a substance of extreme interest as a starting material for the synthesis of high- temperature superconducting materials at high pressure .

The results are already allowing scientists to see things that humanity has never seen before

First industry user rep

B A R B A R A F AY

A R D

A brand new section has opened in the ESRF User Organisation with the election of Barbara Fayard, a user representative for industry. The CEO of Novitom, a Grenoble-based company that supplies advanced analytical services from light sources to the commercial world, Fayard will have a remit that covers industry research and development, advanced characterisation, industrial collaboration and partnerships, standardised and high-throughout approaches, and support to strategic European industry missions.

French national restrictions meant participants had to access the User Meeting remotely.

ESRFMar21_News_v9.indd 8 26/02/2021 10:00