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Joint ISIS/Diamond Proposals

Joint ISIS/Diamond Proposals

  • Ready for review

    • Please read these instructions before embarking on a joint ISIS/I15-1 Diamond experiment

    Before Submitting a Proposal

    If possible, before submitting your ISIS experiment, tick the box that asks for joint ISIS/Diamond (I15-1 XPDF) time is the best way of obtaining time at I15-1 as well as ISIS. Through this route, Diamond will automatically create a proposal in our user system (UAS) with the appropriate users and a member of I15-1 staff.

    Please also share your joint proposal with the I15-1 staff (ideally Daniel Irving (daniel.irving@diamond.ac.uk)) prior to submission to check that the experiment is most suited through this route as well as its feasibility. The joint route is for easy experiments (ex-situ, room temperature or a few temperature points), if the experiment proposed is either longer than 1 shift (8 hours) of measurement, check here for experimental timings, or is an in-situ style experiment, please submit a full proposal to Diamond. If unsure, please contact the beamline.

     

    If you have not applied via the joint access route, please apply via rapid access - information on how to do this can be found here.

    Running Your Experiment

    Congratulations on obtaining time at both ISIS and Diamond! In order to run your samples at I15-1, you must do the following prior to the Diamond experiment going ahead. Please note that all joint proposals will be run unattended i.e., no users will be on site to run them. If you feel like you would like to attend the beamtime for difficult samples, multiple joint proposals etc., please contact the beamline.

    Completing the Risk Assessments

    1. Make sure the Experimental Risk Assessment (ERA) has been completed and validated. Diamond cannot accept any samples that have not been risk assessed.

      1. All samples within in the “Samples” tab must be the samples you plan to run during your X-ray experiment. These must be the samples that you have run during your ISIS experiment as this is the time that the panel has accepted.

      2. The “Experimental Methods” must be completed. All samples will be run using our robotic sample changer, and therefore the following statement can be used.

    Sample Method Statement:

    “Samples will be prepared into beamline supplied capillaries and loaded at ISIS. The sealed samples will then be delivered to beamline staff who can load them onto the beamline sample changer.”

    Instrument Method Statement:

    “This experiment will be run using the I15-1 robotic sample changer. Samples will be prepared in capillaries and delivered to Diamond staff for the remote experiment. Broken capillaries will be disposed of in the sharps waste.”

    If also running a variable temperature experiment, also add:

    “Variable temperature measurements will be obtained using the beamline hot air blower/cryostream (delete as appropriate) covered by the beamline risk assessment.”

    c. Equipment can be left blank.

    d. If possible/not already added, please add your ISIS local contact and Dr Daniel Irving (Diamond I15-1 Beamline Scientist) to the proposal as Alternate Contacts. This will allow your friendly beamline/instrument scientists to easily run your experiment.

    Loading Your Samples

    We are more than happy for you to load your samples either at ISIS during your ISIS beamtime or in your home lab to measure before or after your ISIS experiment. I15-1 use specific capillaries that are specially designed to be ideal for XPDF experiments on the beamline, please only use these capillaries. Our capillaries come in three different materials.

    • Borosilicate capillaries - use these for most standard experiments!

      • Find more information on sizes and type here.

        • frame.png
          Link to instructions on glass capillary choice and loading instructions.

    • Quartz capillaries - if your samples is going to be heated to over 500degC.

      • They come in a variety of sizes that can be checked here.

    • Kapton capillaries - if your sample is very weakly scattering or you expect important bond lengths similar of that to Si-O (1.6-1.7 Angstrom).

      • More information can be found here.

        • kapton.png
          Link to instructions on Kapton capillary choice and loading instructions.

    At ISIS

    If you are loading your samples at ISIS, your instrument scientist will have access to the specific capillaries that are needed for an I15-1 experiment. Please liase with your instrument scientist for access to capillaries or extra supplies that you may need from Diamond. Once they are loaded, please place them in glass vials or centrifuge tubes that are clearly labelled with the sample name, this will help your Diamond scientist run your experiment.

    At Your Home Institution

    We can also dispatch your capillaries to your home lab to load there if you wish to run them before or after your ISIS experiment. Please fill in the form below to allow your Diamond beamline scientist to dispatch capillaries to you.

    https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/B6XxL4dAwU

    Once they have been filled, please dispatch them back to Diamond following these instructions. We will endevour to run them as soon as possible, schedule and beamline dependent.

    Post Experiment

    Once your experiment has been run, you will receive an email from one of the beamline staff to inform you that experiment has been completed. We endeavor to quickly check data quality to make sure that there is sample is in the beam and that scattering has occurred. Please also check yourself as we do have the potential to rerun samples that do not meet our quality requirements.

    We will provide you with .nxs and .xy files that contain the raw and corrected 2th data. At this point, we unfortunately do not auto-process your data to PDF, check here to learn about processing data and if you are still unsure, please contact the beamline.