In addition to the beamline experimental stations, Diamond provides a range of support facilities for users. Preparation laboratories, office space and meeting rooms are all housed in the Diamond Experimental Hall. The Guesthouse for overnight accommodation is just a short walk away, as well as the restaurant available (including weekends) at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL). Users also have access to the extensive libraries of the RAL.

B22 has a dedicated preparation laboratory for IR users in addition to the offline facilities at Diamond. Located close to the beamline, it is divided into a dry and wet part for allowing proper handling of any inorganic and organic samples which would require dedicated preparation before beamtime.

It will provide:

• a safe and clean environment for sample preparation
• storage for users’ samples and small equipment as well as beamline materials
• off line sample characterisation.

The dry area is equipped with a fume hood, a small oven and a pellet press for inorganic sample preparation. The wet area has a (class II) bio safety cabinet, an incubator and centrifuges to prepare cell biology experiments, a cryo- microtome as well as embedding equipment to prepare thin sections from histopathology tissues. Together with general sample preparation equipment – i.e. benches, fridge/freezer, sample racks and a water purifier – a stereo and phase contrast microscope with CCD camera on an anti-vibration table will be in common to map areas of interest and to survey samples prior to using the IR beam.

In addition a cell culture facility is going to be developed at Diamond. This is in order to exploit one of the most recent areas of research with IR in Clinical applications, namely live cell molecular imaging and the response of cells to anti-cancer drugs. To support the interests from Clinicians in the IR microspectroscopy technique, and more general interests of other Diamond users, a space has been allocated in the Diamond Experimental Hall in the immediate vicinity of B22. This cell culture space is envisaged as a common facility to be shared among all the beam lines involved in BioMedical applications.

Future developments:

Off-line characterisation will include a Raman microscope capable of chemical imaging. This will allow the users to have a detailed complementary characterization of the sample where required. All sample environments used on the beamline end stations are expected to be transferable to the Raman instrument.