HPCAT recently hosted workshops for two groups of graduate students attending the 2024 National School on Neutron and X-ray Scattering (NXS). The workshops were led by assistant physicist Innocent Ezenwa and postdoctoral appointee Tyler Eastmond. Innocent and Tyler taught the students about fundamental principles, applications, and techniques of high-pressure research, with a particular focus on the Paris-Edinburgh (PE) press program at 16-BM-B. The workshop activities were designed to be hands-on, allowing the students to appreciate the precision and care required to successfully conduct challenging high-pressure experiments. In addition to classroom tutorials, the students practiced assembling PE sample capsules and then set up and ran experiments in the PE press, in which they investigated pressure-induced phase transitions in bismuth. As beam is not yet available in BM-B due to the ongoing upgrade, the high-pressure behavior of bismuth was observed through electrical resistance measurements, a technique new to BM-B that was recently developed to probe phase transitions with high accuracy and sensitivity. The workshop was well received by the students, who enjoyed the interactive nature of the experiments.   

The main purpose of the National School on Neutron and X-ray Scattering  is to educate graduate students in the use of major neutron and X-ray facilities. Students conduct short experiments at Argonne's Advanced Photon Source and at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Spallation Neutron Source and High Flux Isotope Reactor. 

The School is supported by the U. S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, and Materials Sciences and Engineering Division.