The next Inside Diamond open day will feature an introduction to Diamond, a tour of the machine and a chance to meet and talk to our scientist and engineers. We expect the visit will last around two and a half hours. 

There are events throughout the year and booking opens 6-8 weeks in advance of the event. Click here for more details.

Click to download the Diamond-II Conceptual Design Report and Science Case below:

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 complementary improvements to optics, detectors, sample delivery, detectors, and computing, as well as integrated and correlative methods, is proposed. This will be transformative in speed and resolution, and will offer users streamlined access to enhanced instruments for life and physical sciences. 

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 an increased brightness and coherence of a factor of up to 70 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.

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 structural biology 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 deliver transformative gains in many areas of X-ray research in physical sciences through groundbreaking technical innovation, too. For example, the improved energy 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. 

To see more of the new science that Diamond-II will enable, please download our comprehensive Science Case below.

This timeline shows the proposed schedule for planning, design, construction and commissioning for the Diamond-II machine upgrade. The dark period when Diamond is not operational will be of the order of 18 months, so steps will be taken to minimise the impact of this on the Diamond user community. This will include access to facilities outside the UK, co-ordinated to avoid dark periods. For this, it is important that plans for Diamond-II are coordinated within a road map of European facilities that is being drawn up through the League of European Accelerator-based Photon Sources (LEAPS). Current plans for dark periods at other facilities are shown.

Learn more about the unique opportunities, new beamlines, engineering developments and scientific progress that the Diamond-II will facilitate in the documents below. The Conceptual Design Report offers more details into the upgrade, whilst the Science Case highlights the key opportunities and changes that Diamond-II will bring to each of the scientific disciplines and techniques served by Diamond Light Source.

Click to download the Diamond-II Conceptual Design Report and Science Case below: