Virtual cover
A paper on electron diffraction discussed in the previous issue of ATAP News has been selected as the virtual “cover” story of Nature Communication Physics. The paper describes how the High Repetition Rate Electron Scattering facility, developed by ATAP’s Berkeley Accelerator Controls and Instrumentation (BACI) Program and located at the Advanced Light Source (ALS), was used to perform the first-ever ultrafast electron diffraction studies of optical melting of tantalum ditelluride (TaTe2). Tantalum ditelluride is one of a class of materials called transition-metal dichalcogenides, studied increasingly over the last several years, that have interesting and potentially useful properties when formed into atomically thin monolayers.
The achievement, previously summarized in a Research Highlight by Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry, also helps validate the scientific usefulness of this one-of-a-kind instrument, enabled by research that began with advanced photoinjectors for light sources. ATAP’s Daniele Filippetto, principal investigator of the HiRES UED beamline, is a corresponding author of the paper in Nature journal Communications Physics.
