The ultrafast beamline at MAX IV helps scientists study how materials are structured and how they change over extremely short periods of time. These studies are important for developing new ways to use light to control materials, which could lead to new approaches to manufacturing in various industries, clean energy solutions inspired by how plants use sunlight, and a deeper understanding of chemical and biological processes.
Thanks to powerful new X-ray sources with very high brilliance, combined with a femtosecond X-ray beamline, researchers can observe changes in materials that happen in just femtoseconds, that’s one quadrillionth of a second. The key to this research is using ultrashort laser- and X-ray pulses.
At the MAX IV laboratory in Sweden, the FemtoMAX beamline produces ultrashort X-ray flashes. The pulses are as short as the tiny vibrations of molecules and have wavelengths matching the distances between atoms. FemtoMAX is fully operational and facilitates time-resolved X-ray diffraction and scattering experiments, techniques that captures ultrafast changes in materials at different time points. Such studies are of fundamental importance for key scientific problems directly related to programming materials using light, enabling new storage media and new manufacturing techniques, obtaining sustainable energy by mimicking photo-synthesis and gleaning insight into chemical and biological functional dynamics.
FemtoMAX is an important resource not only for Swedish scientists but also for researchers around the world in physics, chemistry, and biology. FemtoMAX invites researchers from around the world to conduct experiments, aiming to solidify its role as the only beamline for ultrafast X-ray studies at MAX IV Laboratory.