Diamond Light Source has established itself as a world-class synchrotron facility enabling research by leading academic and industrial groups in physical and life sciences. Diamond has pioneered a model of highly efficient and uncompromised infrastructure offered as a user-focussed service driven by technical and engineering innovation.

To continue delivering the world-changing science that Diamond enables, the Diamond-II upgrade, a co-ordinated programme of development that combines a major machine upgrade with new instruments and complementary improvements to optics, detectors, sample environment and delivery capabilities, and computing, as well as integrated and correlative methods, is proposed. This will be transformative in speed and spatial resolution and will offer users streamlined access to enhanced instruments for life and physical sciences. 

Click here to find out more about the proposed Flagship Beamline Projects and the selection process.

Schematic of the current Diamond DBA (Double Bend Achromat, bottom) and the proposed design for a DTBA (Double Triple Bend Achromat) for Diamond-II (top).

We are entering a new era of opportunity with the advent of 4^th generation sources, the so-called Diffraction Limited Storage Rings (DLSRs). The progress in accelerator technology and the decrease of the electron horizontal emittance between one and two orders of magnitude, offers the scientific community the opportunity to exploit much brighter photon beams and an increased coherence over a large energy range.

The proposed Diamond-II new machine lattice will be based on Double Triple Bend Achromats (DTBAs). This means a transformative increase in brightness and coherence and provides mid-section straights to retain and enhance all beamlines on bending magnets while offering additional sources for 5 potential new beamlines.

This design increases the electron beam energy from 3.0 to 3.5 GeV providing greatly increased photon flux at higher energies.  

The new science opportunities afforded by the Diamond-II machine upgrade will necessitate the renewal of beamline optics, sample environments and detectors, as well as substantial upgrades to our capacity and capability for data storage and computation.

Download and learn more about the details of the upgrade and engineering developments that Diamond-II will facilitate in The Conceptual Design Report.

Not only will the Diamond-II upgrade be a feat of technological development, it will also enable new science and research progress in all areas of our operation.

For example, the continued advancements in life sciences through this upgrade, will enrich our understanding of biological structure across many scales and dimensions. This includes spatial dimensions where atomic level details describe life in terms of fundamental chemistry and dynamic, and where changes are measured at time-scales relevant to biology; from one-billionth of a second to minutes.

Diamond-II will also deliver transformative gains in many areas of X-ray research in physical sciences through ground breaking technical innovation, too. For example, the improved energy and spatial resolution of spectrometers will allow unprecedented sensitivity to the speed of electronic changes during chemical processes, catalysis, battery charging, and the elementary excitations in quantum materials. 

Download our comprehensive Science Case which highlights the key opportunities and changes that Diamond-II will bring to each of the scientific disciplines and techniques served by Diamond Light Source.