Sommer School 2017 Event Review
The 3rd CENEM Summer School for X-ray Scattering 2017 took place on 24–27 July 2017 at the Institute for Crystallography and Structural Physics (ICSP) in Erlangen. The summer school was sponsored by Anton Paar and provided a detailed insight into a variety of modern X-ray scattering techniques during seminars in the mornings and hands-on training in the afternoons. The main topics were X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), small-angle X-ray and neutron scattering (SAXS/SANS), X-ray reflectometry (XRR), grazing incidence small-angle X-ray scattering and grazing incidence diffraction (GISAXS/GIXD).
In the morning lectures the theoretical background, instrumental details, data reduction, analysis strategies and current applications of X-ray scattering techniques were presented and discussed. It was a particular pleasure to welcome Dr. Oliver Seeck from DESY, Hamburg, who gave a lecture about X-ray scattering techniques at synchrotron radiation sources.
The afternoon sessions were reserved for practical hands-on training, held in small groups of three to four participants, to ensure that every participant had the chance to measure real sample systems at our state-of-the-art instruments, which are included in the CENEM user facility. Each participant also reduced and analyzed the recorded data.
The practical training was an important first qualification step towards being able to perform own measurements.
The this year’s participants came from research fields of EAM and beyond, including materials science, physics, chemistry, chemical and biological engineering and biotechnology. We were happy to welcome two external participants from Mateis-INSA laboratories, Lyon (France) and the Adolphe Merkle Institute, Fribourg (Switzerland), respectively. The summer school was mainly dedicated to doctoral candidates but was also open to Bachelor and Master degree students, postdoctoral researchers, and employees. Due to the limited capacity of the hands-on training sessions, only 15 applicants could be accepted this year.
At the end of the school, a barbeque took place at the institute, giving the participants the opportunity to discuss their own topics and interests with the members of the institute and to plan future cooperations.
We thank the organizing commitee and the involved members of ICSP as well as the EAM office for their engaged work and support which led to the great success of the summer school 2017. We are looking forward to the 4th CENEM Summer School for X-ray Scattering 2018 which is planned to take place at the end of July 2018.
Dennis Noll, Jack Elia, Tobias Unruh
Scattering Method Facility at CENEM:
www.cenem.fau.de/facilities/scattering_methods.shtml
Institute for Crystallography and Structural Physics: