New Scientific Opportunities at the European Synchrotron Radiation ...

European Synchrotron Radiation Facility Long-Term Strategy 7 July 2006
Soft condensed matter (SCM) represents a research area in which the ESRF user
community in universities, research laboratories and industry has expressed a great
interest in creating a partnership that links different experimental techniques to the
experiments at the beamlines. Soft condensed matter is also an area that can exploit
and benefit from the complementarity of performing experiments on the same sample
with neutrons and X-rays. The development of a Partnership for Soft Condensed
Matter should involve both ILL and ESRF. A SCM partnership on the ESRF-ILL-
EMBL site should contain key facilities for polymer synthesis and deuteration, AFM,
STM, cryo-EM, NMR and advanced computing, that may not be available in the
laboratories of the users. This partnership will depend crucially on the availability of
the infrastructure referred to in Section 2.3.1 as the Nano-Science Centre.
Cancer treatment represents one of the world’s greatest health challenges. An
increasing engagement in cancer research is taking place on the ESRF-ILL-EMBL
site. Promising preclinical trials on brain cancer treatment have been carried out at
the biomedical beamline, ILL has initiated similar activities, and several of the
research activities within the PSB are related to cancer aetiology and cancer gene
therapy. The unique variety of research tools (X-rays, neutrons, molecular and cell
biology) available on the same site calls for the establishment of a European
partnership for cancer research, which will benefit from the proposed developments
of the medical beamline.
Pioneering experiments carried out by ESRF and CRG staff in collaboration with
scientists from the leading European High Magnetic Field Laboratories (Toulouse,
Grenoble, Nijmegen, Dresden) have shown the feasibility of X-ray diffraction
experiments under pulsed high magnetic fields (~ 30T), creating exciting new
opportunities in magnetism and magnetic materials. The possibility to develop this
collaboration into a partnership which will couple the ESRF expertise in X-ray use
with those of high magnetic field laboratories is under consideration. The aim is to
provide a unique facility with unique scientific opportunities for the users of the ESRF.
The ILL is included in these discussions and the possibility of a shared ESRF-ILL
facility to produce large DC magnetic fields is also being considered.
The ESRF, in some cases in collaboration with the ILL and the EMBL, sees it as its
responsibility to create the local infrastructure which includes laboratory space and
basic beamline equipment to host these scientific partnerships between academia,
industry and research laboratories.
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