February 9, 2011

Blizzard Brings New NSLS Microscope

As snow fell fast and furious from a winter blizzard sweeping over Long Island, a microscope arrived by truck at the Main Gate on the evening of December 26, 2010. At the time, Brookhaven Lab was officially closed because of the storm and would remain closed until noon, December 28.

So began a three-day saga of clearing snow to move the expensive and delicate instrument to a staging area on site and then to NSLS, its final destination.

The arrival of the transmission x-ray microscope at NSLS

Compacting the tale in only three sentences, the delivery truck parked at the gate under the watchful eyes of Laboratory Protection for a day and a half, with the driver "camping out" in the sleeper unit of his tractor. Site Resources coordinated snow removal and rigging, consulting with Procurement and Property Management about contractual terms of the delivery. Site Resources also opened its doors at central fabrication, Bldg. 479, to hold the instrument safety until the west roll-up door at NSLS was ready for delivery.

Setting aside for a moment the microscope's dramatic arrival at the Lab, the story of the instrument began in 2009. With support from NSLS management, resident users Jun Wang, Yong Chu, Ken Evans-Lutterodt and Tony Lanzirotti proposed acquiring a transmission x-ray microscope (TXM) for three research themes: x-ray imaging of energy storage materials, microelectronics structural studies, and nanotomography of biofuels. Industrial and academic users will benefit significantly by this new imaging capability. The application energy range of this hard x-ray microscope is 5 to 11 thousand electron volts, and its target imaging resolution is 30 nanometers, ideal for these studies. (One nanometer is one billionth of a meter.)

The TXM proposal was one of several submitted to DOE by NSLS in response to a call for instrumentation proposals that might be funded using American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding. After external review, DOE awarded $2 million for the TXM, and the instrument - called the nanoXCT-S200 - was subsequently ordered from Xradia, Inc., headquartered in California. (NSLS was also awarded $1 million to procure six advanced x-ray detectors, which have all been delivered and are now in use on the experimental floor.)

According to Wang, the TXM is a critical element of a 2010 NSLS-II beamline development proposal that had a successful review last year. With future funding anticipated, said Wang, "The microscope will be moved to a superconducting wiggler source at NSLS-II, where we will target video speed imaging with resolution better than 30 nanometers."

The instrument arrived in three crates, the biggest weighing 8,300 pounds and measuring 10 x 4 x 7 feet, big enough to walk into.

With the size and weight of that one crate, the final leg of the microscope's journey was the most worrisome. Rigging supervisor Jim O'Malley said that the NSLS loading area has an incline, which made the move into the building tricky even with the snow cleared. In the end, with a bit of skillful maneuvering, the job was done successfully and safely.

Installation by Xradia engineers on beamline X8C - with help from NSLS staff members Lonny Berman, Joe Dvorak, Edwin Haas, Rodger Hubbard, Sorin Pop, and Zhijian Yin - took place January 24-28, and commissioning will begin at the end of February.