9317772 Rivers This award provides support for the design, construction, equipping and operation of several experimental stations, jointly referred to as a sector, at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) located at the Argonne National Laboratory. The APS, a positron storage ring or synchrotron capable of producing hard x-radiation of much greater flux, brilliance, intensity and photon energy than previous x-ray sources, provides a revolutionary new tool for research requiring an understanding of the atomic and molecular structure of matter. Earth scientists dealing with the characterization of earth materials in research areas including mineral physics of Earth materials at very high pressure, environmental geochemistry, and soils science will gain access to APS x-radiation through the GeoCARS sector at APS, which will be operated as a national user facility for the entire earth, planetary, soil, and environmental research communities in the U.S. The GeoCARS sector at APS will include facilities for high-pressure research with diamond anvil cells and large-volume presses, diffraction and scattering, absorption spectroscopy and anomalous scattering, and fluorescence microprobe analysis and microtomography. The GeoCARS sector will be operated and managed by the Consortium for Advanced Radiation Sources at the University of Chicago. ***
