Swiss Light Source - SLS
COVID-19: SLS is in full 24/7 user operation
The SLS is in full 24/7 user operation with safety measures against COVID-19 infections in place. Currently international business travel is still restricted and thus not all users can reach Switzerland. Please see below or on the user office pages further information entitled 'Important information for SLS and SwissFEL users'.
The Swiss Light Source (SLS) at the Paul Scherrer Institut is a third-generation synchrotron light source. With an energy of 2.4 GeV, it provides photon beams of high brightness for research in materials science, biology and chemistry.
SLS is part of the Photon Science Division. The facility has world-leading instruments at its beamlines for unraveling the structure of proteins, for in-depth 3D imaging of matter, and for investigating how the electrons of atoms and molecules keep matter together and render it properties such as magnetism and electron conduction at zero resistance (‘superconductivity’).
- The beamlines for protein structure determination are intensively used by pharmaceutical companies in Switzerland and abroad. SLS is also leading in the development of pixelated X-ray detectors. The company DECTRIS has been spun off from these activities.
- In something as complex as a human being structures and processes occur on all length scales from macroscopic down to atomic dimensions. The SLS host a variety of techniques to address problems on different length scales.
- Materials with new, functional properties are the scope of intense research, since they offer fascinating insights into fundamental interactions and hold promise for advanced technologies which is highly needed. The SLS host world-leading capability in advanced materials spectroscopy ranging from photoemission spectroscopy, over spectromicroscopy to different X-ray absorption, scattering and diffraction techniques.
- A further focus is to provide advanced micro- and nanofabrication technologies to academic and industrial users, in particular in the area of polymer nanotechnology.
Current operation status
Latest Scientific Highlights and News
Understanding the physics in new metals
Together with international colleagues, PSI researchers have now been able to make correlated metals more readily usable for applications in superconductivity, data processing, and quantum computers.
Full-field X-ray absorption tomography reveals the chemical structure of defects in metal-organic frameworks
Cryo-full-field XANES computed tomography was used to visualize the presence and distribution of a second coordination polymer of reduced copper coordination within defect-engineered HKUST-1 MOF crystals. Observations encourage a revisitation of the structure-property relationships of defect-engineered MOFs.
Imaging strain with high resolution
Imaging strain in crystalline materials with high resolution can be a challenging task. Researchers demonstrate an original use of X-ray ptychography for this purpose: ptychographic topography.
