Sample Environment Workshops

scheduled meetings

Do you have a sample environment that you would like to discuss with the community? Either because you have a new development or because you want to discuss possibilities with a group of experienced reflectometry scientists. Contact us the sample environment working group (ayscough@ill.fr or humphreys@ill.fr) and we would be happy to organise an event alongside you.

Notes from our meeting on Electrochemical cells 19/11/2025

The session started off with talks from Mary Wood (University of Copenhagen) and Beck Hodgetts (Monash University) on thier experience with electrochemical cell design iterations in thier research. Mary Wood presented the iterative changes in design of the ISIS electrochemical set up optimised to investigate assembly processes of proteins and membranes. Beck Hodgetts presented their design for high-pressure electrochemical measurements and a yet untested sign for co-measurement of electrochemistry, neutron reflectometry and attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy. Short talks were then given for set ups from different facillities and research groups-a table of which can be found on our sample environment pages covering designs for resarch on batteries, ionic liquids, membranes and electrocatalysis. Discussions were had on struggling with impedance loss, variations in positioning of the electrodes and use of wet reference electrodes vs renewal of pseudo-reference electrodes.

Notes from our meeting on Furnaces 09/02/2026

Our second ORSO workshop had three invited talks on different furnace environments for reflectivity. The first talk was from Anthony Higgins (University of Swansea) describing the use of the D17 quartz furnace for in-situ measurements of annealing polymer thin films and his research motivated by understanding the formation of organic photovoltaic devices. Oleg Konovalov (ESRF) presented a unique furnace deign used for the analysis of 2-D material growth, the furnace reaches temperatures of 1600K and has a window for microscope measurements. Our third talk was from Anton Le Brun (ANSTO) on the Spatz furnace discussing current possibilities and issues and future developments. General discussion focussed on sample allignment, temperature offsets and reliable sealing of custom set ups.

Notes from our meeting on Troughs 26/05/2025

In this session we had three presentations, the first of which was from Tom Arnold (ESS) on ‘Efforts towards automated sample changing of free liquid samples on Freia at ESS and LISA at DESY’. The talk covered the work on increased automation of trough experiments to deal with fast paced x-ray reflectivity or neutron reflectivity experiments, involving a robot arm to unload/reload troughs and automation of trough filling. Our second talk was by Chen Desy on ‘New possibilities of Langmuir trough GID set up at PO8 for characterising liquid surfaces’ presented his advanced trough set-up sprecialissed for grazing incidence diffraction. Our third invited talk was Ben Thompson who presented ‘An instrument for simultaneous measurement of interfacial structure and rheology: RheoSurfR’, a trough designed to measure shear and dilation on the same interface designed for neutron reflectometry measurements and presented some nice results collected recently at different facilities. Then several facility members presented thier available set ups or set ups in development including Anton Le Brun from ANSTO, Dave Walwark from ChemMatCars, Yohko Yano from Kindai University and Sophie Ayscough from ILL. Discussions were had on assesssing complete volume exchange, reduction of vibrations and the need for ease of software and data export for user accesibility being needed for workhorse troughs. Full minutes and presentations available on github pages.

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