The Swiss Light Source SLS has been in operation since 2001. This large research facility, which is unique in Switzerland, began a comprehensive upgrade to a diffraction-limited storage ring in October 2023. The machine upgrade was completed by the end of 2024, and the beamlines are now coming back online. With this upgrade, photon science at PSI will keep pace with the latest developments in science, technology, engineering and data processing.
Following the modernisation project, called SLS 2.0, novel research and more precise investigations are possible. With this technical overhaul, SLS will remain in the top tier of international synchrotron light sources. The project is being funded as part of the ERI Dispatch 2021-2024 programme.
Current operation status
Latest Scientific Highlights and News
Aluminium made visible
PSI researchers have for the first time determined the exact position of the aluminium atoms in zeolites, which make these materials such good catalysts.
Nanostructure orientation in 3D with visible light by Tomographic Müller-Polarimetric Microscopy
We developed a new method, tomographic Müller-polarimetric microscopy (TMPM), that allows to retrieve at three-dimensional microscopic resolution the nanoscale structural information of the ultrastructure probed with polarized light in a non-destructive manner using a low cost and experimentally simple optical setup.
Antiferrodistortive and ferroeletric phase transitions in freestanding films of SrTiO3
Epitaxially grown thin films are commonly used to strain engineer electronic properties by the choice of a substrate, and therefore do not match bulk properties (leading to properties that deviate from the bulk material). Free standing ultrathin oxide films are expected to preserve the bulk-like properties due to the absence of substrate influence. However, we show that this expectation is not fulfilled with ultrathin free standing SrTiO3, as they get ferroelectric at 80K.
