From 10 to 14 April 2018, the ANATOMIX beamline hosted its first user experiment following a proposal approved by SOLEIL’s Program Committees.
The research team led by Michel Bornert, from the Laboratoire Navier at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, conducted measurements in white beam microtomography, as part of a study on polymers with a dual-scale porosity.
The spatial resolution applied on ANATOMIX for this project (pixel size 0.65 μm) made it possible to solve the fine porosity of these polymers, and the high definition of the images, with volumes up to 30 billion voxels (a “voxel” is a three-dimensional pixel), will make it possible to analyze the large-scale spatial organization of mesopores.
The data acquisition conditions made it possible to use part of the beamtime for preliminary exploratory analyses on other classes of materials, for later experiments, involving no less than 7 PhD theses or post-doctoral projects.
These measurements concern composite concretes, porous rocks or various varieties of wood. In particular, some dynamic in-situ tomography measurements of the adsorption of water in wood were carried out over extended periods of time.
During the four days of the experiment, the user team acquired more than 100 tomographic scans, corresponding to approximately six terabytes of raw data.
This first team of external users will soon be followed by another group, led by the Laboratoire de Paléontologie, Evolution, Paléoécosystèmes, Paléoprimatologie (PALEVOPRIM) in Poitiers, and by several more later this year. If you are interested in submitting a proposal for the next call for projects, contact the beamline scientists!
Surrounding Mario Scheel, beamline scientist on ANATOMIX (3rd from the left), the first users of the beamline, from left to right: Dang Mao Nguyen, Patrick Aimedieu, Sarra Mezhoud, Sabine Caré and Michel Bornert (Laboratoire Navier).