IUVS Beamline

Welcome to the Inelastic UltraViolet Scattering Beamline @ Elettra

The IUVS beamline is dedicated to the study of inelastic scattering with ultraviolet radiation, in a time-space domain not accessible at present by other facilities. In the inelastic scattering process, an incident photon, with energy E_i and momentum K_i interacts with the matter. In this interaction the photons can be diffused, with energy E_s and momentum K_s. Here q=K_s-K_i is called "exchanged moment" and is of considerable importance in the study of inelastic diffusion. We can define the “elastic scattering” when the incident photon energy is the same of the diffused one while we refer to “inelastic scattering” when there is an energy variation. It is important to point out that q is directly dependent on the time and energy as well as from the speed of light in the sample (and therefore on its refractive index).

Research Highlights

Amyloidogenic and non-amyloidogenic molten globule conformation of β-lactoglobulin in self-crowded regime

Molecular insights on the thermal unfolding and aggregation of proteins are achivied by in situ and operando UV Resonance Raman spectroscopy.

A Double-Walled Tetrahedron with AgI4 Vertices Binds Different Guests in Distinct Sites

A double-walled tetrahedral metal-organic cage assembled in solution from silver(I), 2-fromyl-1,8-naphthyridine, halide, and a threefold-symmetric triamine.

Electron-phonon coupling and vibrational properties of size-selected linear carbon chains by resonance Raman scattering

UV resonance Raman spectroscopy of size-selected linear sp-carbon chains unveils vibrational overtones and combinations up to the fifth order.

Amide Spectral Fingerprints are Hydrogen Bonding-Mediated

The origin of the peculiar amide spectral features of proteins in aqueous solution is investigated by exploiting a combined theoretical and experimental approach to study UV Resonance Raman (RR) spectra of simple dipeptide molecular models.

Structural specificity of groove binding mechanism between imidazolium-based ionic liquids and DNA

The predicted capability of Ionic Liquids (ILs) in stabilizing the native structure of nucleic acids is relevant in biotechnology, especially for DNA storage and handling.

Single-atom substitution enables supramolecular diversity from dipeptide building blocks

Dipeptides are popular building blocks for supramolecular gels that do not persist in the environment and may find various applications.

In Competition for Water: Hydrated Choline Chloride:Urea vs Choline Acetate:Urea Deep Eutectic Solvents

The replacement of chloride with acetate makes possible the design of safer choline-based DESs.

Structure of human telomere G-quadruplex in the presence of a model drug

G-rich DNA sequences are able to fold into structures called G-quadruplexes (G4).

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The peculiarity of IUVS is the specific kinematic region that can be investigated. IUVS beamline delivers photons with incident energy between 5 and 11 eV. The incident photons that are inelastically diffused by the sample can be analysed by exploiting the two different and complementary experimental set-up available on the beamline, i.e. UV Brillouin and UV Resonant Raman scattering instruments, in order to probe both the acoustic and optical phonons propagating in the system. This allows to acquire information about the structure and dynamics of the constituent matter over diﬀerent length scales through the analysis of its collective and molecular vibrations.

The almost-backscattering configuration of Brillouin setup, with scattering angle theta of 178 degree, allows an exchanged momentum range of 2*10-2-2*10-1nm^-1, corresponding to 10-1000 µeV scattered energy. Therefore it can investigate a S(q,ω) kinematic region not accessible at present by other experimental techniques as Brillouin scattering with visible light, X-Ray scattering and neutron scattering.

The more recently realized experimental setup that enables to perform UV Resonant Raman spectroscopy using synchrotron radiation in the range of wavelengths 200-270 nm provides a fine tunable source in the deep-UV for mapping a wide resonance landscape range in different samples, from nanostructures and strongly correlated materials to biophysical and biochemical systems.

User's News

Proposal Submission

We invite users and collabrators to discuss thier proposals with the beamline local contacts well in advance before the submission deadline. This is crucial for a careful assesment of the experiment feasibility and may lead to improvements in the proposed experimental plan. In a restricted number of cases, when doubts arise about the suitability of your samples (sample absorption etc), it may be possible for you to arrange a test. Our website provides a wealth of informaiton on experiment feasibilty and proposal submission. For more info, please vist the IUVS Users section.

Call for proposals

The deadline for proposal submission for beamtime allocation is to be announced

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Last Updated on Thursday, 02 September 2021 16:17