Roaming mechanism revealed in bromoform

Experiment provides evidence for long-debated roaming mechanism in photochemical reactions

14-Apr-2026 - The halomethane compound bromoform (CHBr3) has devastating effects on the ozone layer. In the upper layers of the atmosphere, bromoform reacts with UV radiation, releasing bromine molecules which destroy ozone molecules. This reaction, however, has long puzzled scientists; the molecules involved ...

AI rebuilds molecules from exploding fragments

Researchers trained a neural network that can use ion momentum to work backward and predict the pre-blast geometry of a molecule

23-Mar-2026 - Researchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the United States, European XFEL, and collaborating institutions recently built a generative AI model that can recreate molecular structures from the movement of the molecule’s ions after they are blasted apart by X-rays, a technique ...

Chemical shifts help track molecules breaking apart in real time

Ultrafast X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy offers a new way to watch reactions, atom by atom

12-Mar-2026 - When molecules fall apart, their electric charge doesn’t stay put—it rearranges as bonds stretch and break. An international team of scientists has now tracked these ultrafast changes in the small molecule fluoromethane (CH₃F). It was the first time that the Small Quantum Systems (SQS) instrument ...

Proteins in a crowd: European XFEL looks inside cells

Researchers observe in detail how the vital iron protein ferritin makes its way in highly dense environments

05-Dec-2025 - Inside biological cells, there is a dense crowd where millions of proteins move side by side, bump into each other or temporarily accumulate. At the same time, these proteins often have to fulfil important tasks at short notice. How exactly the proteins move in this confined space has been ...

European XFEL reveals quantum fluctuations in complex molecules

A milestone in molecular imaging

11-Aug-2025 - Due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum physics, atoms and molecules never come completely to rest, even in their lowest energy state. Researchers at European XFEL in Schenefeld near Hamburg have now been able to directly measure this quantum motion in a complex molecule for the ...

How Molecules Break and Form Bonds

A crucial step toward truly understanding chemical processes

08-Aug-2025 - Researchers at European XFEL in Germany have tracked in real time the movement of individual atoms during a chemical reaction in the gas phase. Using extremely short X-ray flashes, they were able to observe the formation of an iodine molecule (I₂) after irradiating diiodomethane (CH₂I₂) molecules ...

Super-resolution X-ray technique uncovers atomic structures

New method promises enhanced understanding of chemical reactions and material properties by applying a Nobel-prize winning technique in spectroscopy

23-Jul-2025 - Researchers from the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, USA, along with the Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik (MPIK) in Heidelberg and the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (European XFEL) in Hamburg, developed an innovative approach to X-ray spectroscopy, achieving unprecedented detail ...

Structure of liquid carbon measured for the first time

Research team completes groundbreaking experiment at the European XFEL

23-May-2025 - With the declared aim of measuring matter under extreme pressure, an international research collaboration headed by the University of Rostock and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) used the high-performance laser DIPOLE 100-X at the European XFEL for the first time in 2023. With ...

A pioneering spectrometer for hard X-rays at European XFEL

"The new spectrometer opens up completely new spectroscopic possibilities at high X-ray energies"

22-Apr-2025 - Researchers at the European XFEL have developed a new device for X-ray measurements at high photon energies–a so-called Laue spectrometer. It enables X-ray light with photon energies of over 15 kiloelectronvolts to be detected with improved efficiency and highest precision. This is important for ...

Frozen noble gas in the accelerator

29-May-2024 - Researchers at European XFEL in Schenefeld near Hamburg have taken a closer look at the formation of the first crystallisation of nuclei in supercooled liquids. They found: The formation starts much later than previously assumed. The findings could help to better understand the creation of ice in ...