Industrial use of Synchrotron Radiation in Australia

Full text: The Australian Synchrotron Research Program (ASRP) provides Australian scientists with access to state-of-the-art synchrotron radiation research capabilities at overseas synchrotron light source facilities. These are the Australian National Beamline Facility (ANBF) at the Photon Factory, Tsukuba Science City, Japan, and the Advanced Photon Source at the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, USA. A fast developing and maturing Australian synchrotron user program has developed around these overseas facilities, with over 300 users in fields ranging from fundamental X-ray physics to biotechnology and archaeology. While direct industry use of the ASRP facilities has been minimal to date, use by Australian industry via university partners has been substantial. Areas of this mode of industry use have included minerals processing, pharmaceuticals and opto-electronics. Furthermore several startup companies can partly trace their origins back to research performed on ASRP synchrotron facilities