If you have found this page, you are probably considering doing an experiment at DanMAX and need to prepare a proposal. This is our help to help you prepare the best possible proposal.
Our best advice is to contact us, the beamline staff, to discuss your idea if you are not already well acquainted with the beamline – we love discussing experiments. You can find contact information here.
If you plan to do experiments with an increased safety risk (oxidizing/flammable/toxic gasses, toxic chemicals, etc.) you should definitely contact us. If we do not believe that your experiment can be conducted safely at the beamline, the proposal may be disqualified before making it to the external review!
When you start writing, we suggest you have a look at the ‘proposal writing guide’. This guide has a lot of information and tips on general proposal writing, but it is not specific to DanMAX. Below are some things we think can help make the experimental plan clearer, and thereby improve the proposal – and your chances of getting beam time.
Below you can find specifics to consider and describe in your proposal for each of our instruments.
If you are considering using the PXRD2D instrument, you should consider and probably describe the following:
Which geometry will you use? It is not necessary to write all of geometry details in the proposal, but it is often a great help for us and the reviewers if the photon energy and the maximum Q/scattering angle you want to reach are written in the proposal. Consider using XRDplanner to find the optimal detector geometry and energy for your experiment.
Which beam size will you need? It is very easy to focus the beam at DanMAX. The natural (usable) beam size is approximately ~1.0×1.0 mm2, but this is usually unsuitable for PXRD. We can focus the beam from approximately 900 µm to 15 µm across the energy range.
Which sample environment will you use? Describe which sample environment you want to use – if it is something we have available at DanMAX (See these here) or if it is something you will bring (see below). In the latter case, it is always a good idea to include a sketch, photo, or similar of the sample environment to help us and the reviewers.
What type of scans will you use? If you are monitoring a chemical reaction, you may want diffraction data as a function of time – but how fast? And for how long?
If you are looking at the catalytic reactor you may want to study it in different locations to get a spatial component to your data. In this case, which axis will you scan? And what kind of time resolution and spatial resolution are you aiming for?
Or you may want to use a micro-focus beam to perform µXRD and µXRF mapping. In this case, what area do you need to map? And what about the resolution, 10µm, 50µm or larger steps? To help estimate the time needed, have a look at our mapping calculator.
Is it possible to do parallel experiments if each one is slow? In most battery experiments, the electrochemistry is much slower (hours) than the X-ray diffraction data collection (seconds). To increase the utilization of the beam we prefer to run multiple batteries in parallel. Is this an option for your proposed experiment? You can see our standard battery holders here.
If you are considering using the imaging instrument, you should consider and probably describe the following:
Which resolution do you need? At DanMAX we have two objectives x20 and x10, and we can bin the camera pixels to reduce resolution. While high resolutions are nice, remember that they scale the data volume drastically. A standard 550 nm voxel dataset takes up 44 GiB whereas a 275 nm dataset typically takes up 220 GiB! And it doubles the scan time.
What is the necessary field of view? The X-ray beam at DanMAX is ~1.3×1.3 mm2 which is relatively small. Increasing the field-of-view (FoV) drastically increases the scan time and data volume. One way to increase the FoV is through stitching. Scanning a 4 × 4 ×1 mm3 volume takes approximately 1 hour and the dataset will be around 2.5 TiB! Another way to increase the FoV is by measuring multiple local tomograms; however, this might not work for all samples.
What Energy do you need? Higher energy comes with less flux, in other words, longer scan times. However, it is necessary for more dense materials. If you want to use a specific contrast agent, ensure that you are above the absorption edge, so the contrast agent is easily visible – and consider specifying this in the proposal.
Do you need a sample environment? Describe which sample environment you want to use – if it is something we have available at DanMAX (See these here) or if it is something you will bring (see below). In the latter case, it is always a good idea to include a sketch, photo, or similar of the sample environment to help us and the reviewers.
How will you handle the large datasets? You can easily generate 200 TiB data each day during your beamtime. If you plan to do this, you should consider how you will handle this amount of data. You can also consider asking the QIM group at DTU for help with data processing.
If you are considering using the HERDi instrument:
You need a little bit of patience – we expect the hardware to be delivered in 2025 and will make the instrument ready for use as fast as possible.
If you propose to bring your own equipment for the experiment, consider the following:
We have attempted to design the instruments to be highly flexible, so integrating your own equipment is normally not a problem. It is always good to contact the beamline staff to discuss before the proposal is submitted, especially in this case.
Is there enough space to fit the equipment? And which utilities are needed, e.g. compressed air, nitrogen, power, water cooling, etc.
How is the equipment controlled, and how do you want to handle the equipment timing to ensure you can relate the X-ray data to the data recorded with your equipment? Adding details here shows that you have considered the experiment carefully and makes it easier for us to check for feasibility and for the external reviewers to understand the experiment.
At the PXRD2D instrument we can accommodate equipment weighing up to approximately 150 kg. The equipment is interfaced using a simple kinematic mount, find the CAD drawings here.
On the Imaging instrument, we can accommodate sample environments up to 5 kg if you need translation stages to align the sample and up to 45 kg if you don’t need the translations. We have a slip ring that allows a passthrough of a D‑SUB 25 for signal and power and a separate high-voltage connector.
Finally, writing how you plan to analyze the data is always good. Which methods/programs will you use? And how will this analysis help you answer the question you (should) have presented in the scientific case?
Good luck with your proposal!