Synchrotron radiation has provided over the past thirty years an increase in photon flux and source brilliance by more than ten orders of magnitude covering the spectral region from optical light to hard x-rays. This has opened up fundamentally new research areas and it is the key to the understanding of the great success story of synchrotron radiation. This development is not yet over. New sources such as Diamond, which has started operation for users in January 2007 in South Oxfordshire, will even further enhance the brilliance in the x-ray range by about one order of magnitude. In addition, the improvements of source characteristics will go along with corresponding improvements of beamlines. Modern concepts, such as automatic beamline alignment, remote control and remote sample exchanges will enable new applications. For protein structure analysis and for combinatorial chemistry and material tests, for example, high throughput of samples will enable a new experimental approach and sub-micron spatial resolution together with superb non destructive element resolution will reveal new material characteristics for engineering studies.
The talk will describe the present status and future potential of the Diamond Light Source facility together with the programme of experimental methods.
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