PETRA III Science Seminar | Automated and remote access in-situ XAFS experiments - ROCK IT and the future of P65

by Edmund Welter (FS-PETRA-S (FS-PET-S Fachgruppe P65(High-Energy)))

Tuesday 2 May 2023, 14:15 → 15:00 Europe/Berlin

Virtual

 

The access restrictions to research infrastructure during the Corona pandemic and the wish to reduce the carbon dioxide footprint of research activities by minimising the travels to research facilities like PETRA III are the two main motivators to for a collaboration of Helmholtz research centres (HZB, KIT, HZDR and DESY) to initiate a project with the aim to develop remote access and fully automated in-situ/operando experiments in catalysis research. DESY’s XAFS beamline P65 was chosen as one of the experiments were a so called “demonstrator beamline” should be established to show that in-situ experiments in catalysis at synchrotron and neutron sources are possible.

 

The aim of the ROCK-IT demonstrator beamline at P65 is to implement all necessary tools for the automation and remote access for complex in-situ and operando experiments. Different workpackages of the ROCK IT project will work on the evaluation and improvement of remote-access protocols, establishment of new experiment and beamline control software which will include artificial intelligence for automatically conducting the experiments, evaluation of the data in real-time for adjusting experimental parameters, and suitable robotic and automation for changing samples. At P65 this means that specialised sample environments including product analysis modules, robots for sample change etc. and automated beamline control and alignment procedures will be installed and integrated in the coming years.