The Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices (CAMD) has had an extremely busy six months. We developed a glitch in our radiofrequency (RF) system which prevents high-current operation. A shutdown is planned for April to replace the chamber. Also, we had an overfill of liquid nitrogen in our superconducting wiggler due to a gauge malfunction, which caused the loss of a seal. This has now been repaired and we are back to 7-tesla operation. This is excellent news for our protein crystallography (PX) beamline (see below).
We have some 30 to 40 new users for the protein crystallography beamline. This beamline was jointly funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and was the brain-child of our Associate Director, Ben Craft. Unfortunately, we lost Ben to a long illness on December 30. He is missed by all but especially by the accelerator group, which he managed. Although Ben could be acerbic, it was primarily through his efforts that CAMD came into being and through his attention to detail that the project came to fruition.
On March 19, 2003, we commissioned our newest beamline -- a small-angle scattering beamline (SAX), which is located on one of our bending magnets. In addition to giving CAMD some new capabilities, it will relieve some of the pressure on the oversubscribed double-crystal monochromator (DCM) beamline. The SAX has an optical hutch and an end-station hutch, which is extremely large -- requiring two doors and sets of interlocks. Still, the commissioning went smoothly and radiation levels around the hutches during operation remain at background levels (< 100 cpm).
Other exciting news from CAMD: one of our researchers has apparently been able to make nanoparticles in a new reactor (patent pending), relieving much of the problems associated with batch processing. We are excited about this new discovery. CAMD continues to make inroads in mask fabrication, microfluidics, and BioMeMs projects associated with our microfabrication division. With all these new beamlines and projects, CAMD safety personnel are kept hopping. With over 200 badged individuals, things can be frantic at times. So please bear with me if I don't respond immediately to colleagues' requests.