2023-09-28 14:35:42
Institut Paul Scherrer
Villigen, 09.28.2023 – For the major upgrade project of the Swiss Light Source SLS at PSI, the installation will be temporarily shut down. It will be returned to service in 2025 and will then provide even more intense X-ray light than before for future-oriented scientific experiments.
On Saturday morning, September 30, at 8 a.m., the Swiss Light Source SLS, one of the five major research facilities at PSI, will shut down. It will remain out of commission for research for regarding a year, while the facility undergoes a complete upgrade: the “SLS 2.0” transformation project is underway.
The SLS is the only synchrotron research facility in Switzerland. Extremely intense X-ray light is used for scientific experiments, including in the fields of physics, materials science, chemistry, biology and medicine. Since its commissioning in 2001, some 22,500 experiments have been conducted at the SLS. During these 22 years, external researchers have visited there approximately 53,000 times to conduct their analyses.
The objective of the current transformation is to update this leading facility for the scientific questions of the coming decades. The update will greatly intensify the X-ray density: X-ray-like light will become even brighter and its beam path will be concentrated into an even smaller diameter. As a result, it will be possible to analyze more samples at the SLS simultaneously and the quantities of scientific data produced at the same time will be greater. In many cases, this quantity will increase by a factor of 40. Additionally, researchers will be able to view larger portions of a sample. In further experiments, the resolution of the images will be increased, so that it will be possible, for example, to analyze even smaller structures than today on the nanoscale.
Research on systems for the energy transition
The upgrade will primarily concern the 288 meter circumference electron storage ring. It will have a new vacuum tube and around a thousand new complex magnets whose function is to keep the electrons extremely precisely on an improved circular path. In operation, the electrons accelerated to a speed close to that of light emit a very specific X-ray type light: synchrotron radiation. The latter is operated at around twenty beamlines distributed along the ring for scientific analyses.
As part of the upgrade, several new beamlines will also be built, including the future Debye beamline. It will allow researchers to analyze extremely precisely and under realistic conditions materials and systems likely to contribute to the energy transition, such as catalysts and batteries.
Other experimental stations at the SLS are ideally suited to analyzing the electronic and magnetic properties of materials that might prove useful for the next generation of electronic devices, or to take 3D images with high resolution without destruction. of a few nanometers. At other beam lines, we study proteins, the constituent elements of life, the precise knowledge of which contributes to the development of new medicinal active ingredients.
“Highly visible and extremely efficient”
Hans Braun is responsible for the SLS 2.0 upgrade project. “The SLS is not only clearly visible from the outside, it is also an extremely high-performance PSI facility from a scientific point of view,” he notes. It is now undergoing a complete reconstruction. This will allow us to remain competitive and at the forefront scientifically.”
This transformation is not only very demanding and technically complex. It is also subject to very short deadlines, continues Hans Braun: “During the current central phase of the transformation, research at the facility must be stopped,” he explains. In terms of planning, we have therefore done everything to restrict this period as much as possible.
“Dark Time” until January 2025
Research work at the beamlines was already stopped on Monday September 25. The electron accelerator and electron storage ring continued to operate for a few more days for testing. With the shutdown of the electron accelerator, the SLS is now entering what is called “Dark Time”.
The latter will only last 15 months: already in January 2025, the electron accelerator will be relaunched. From there, the beamlines will gradually be put back into service. The first scientific experiments are planned for August 2025. By 2026, scientific activity should be completely restored.
“SLS is used and appreciated by scientists from all over the world, from academia and industry,” recalls Christian Rüegg, director of PSI. After the upgrade, it will perform even better. Not to mention that our scientists at PSI will use this ‘Dark Time’ intensively to adapt the experimental stations technically optimally to the future parameters of the SLS.” Even if the experiments have to stop for a while, science does not take a break.
Texts: Institut Paul Scherrer/Laura Hennemann
About PSI
The Paul Scherrer Institute PSI develops, builds and operates large, complex research facilities and makes them available to the national and international scientific community. The institute’s research areas focus on future technologies, energy and climate, health innovation and the foundations of nature. The training of future generations is a central concern of the PSI. For this reason, around a quarter of our employees are postdocs, doctoral students or apprentices. In total, PSI employs 2,200 people, making it the largest research institute in Switzerland. The annual budget is around CHF 420 million. PSI is part of the ETH domain, the other members being ETH Zurich, ETH Lausanne, Eawag (Institute for Water Research), Empa (Federal Laboratory for Materials Testing and Research ) and the WSL (Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research).
Address for sending questions
Dr Hans-Heinrich Braun
SLS 2.0 project manager
Institut Paul Scherrer, Forschungsstrasse 111, 5232 Villigen PSI, Suisse
Telephone: +41 56 310 32 41, e-mail: hans.braun@psi.ch [français, allemand, anglais]
Auteur
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