New FaRMS x-ray diffraction equipment

The week beginning the 8th May saw the installation of FaRMS’s new Rigaku Smart Lab SE diffractometer in the School of Physics. For experts: the two-dimensional detector on this system will be especially powerful for off-specular measurements on thin film samples, allowing us to more efficiently probe the in-plane lattice parameters in our thin film samples.

The new x-ray system in the School of Physics.

FaRMS at the ESRF

Team members Dr Lottie Harding and PhD student Florence Legg were recently at the ID11 beamline at ESRF, Grenoble, France, conducting some high temperature oxidation studies on Florence’s mixed-actinide oxide epitaxial thin films.

Dr Lottie Harding (left) and Florence Legg (right) with Beam Line Scientist (and Bristol alumna) Dr Eleanor Lawrence Bright at the ID11 end station.

FaRMS team members attend JdA conference – poster prize winner!

Several members of the FaRMS team attended the 52nd Journées des Actinides (JdA) conference at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden, Germany. Congratulations to PhD student Florence Legg on winning the Best Poster Prize, for her work entitled “Epitaxial light actinide oxide thin films”.

Florence Legg next to her prize-winning poster.