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The Canadian Light Source
Over the past 10-15 years there has been tremendous growth in applications of synchrotron light to all branches of science and technology, particularly in chemistry. Synchrotron light is an accelerator-based light source that covers the complete electromagnetic spectrum from infrared to hard X-ray. It is intense, fully tunable, highly polarized, and has a picosecond time structure. Aside from the visible, near-IR and near-UV where lasers are generally superior, the properties of synchrotron light far surpass those of alternative light sources. Annually, up to 20,000 scientists from many disciplines - though predominantly physics and chemistry - use the ~50 facilities available in the world.
Canada is the last of the 'first world' countries to develop its own synchrotron light facility. After 8 years of effort by scientists, the Canadian Light Source was approved on March 31, 1999. It is a medium energy (2.9 GeV), third generation, full service, national facility, now under construction on the campus of the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon. It will provide outstanding performance from the infrared up to about 30 keV X-ray energy. Research is scheduled to begin in December 2003. The main partners in this $178M project (reputedly the most expensive single scientific facility in Canada) are the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the National Research Council (NRC), Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), the province of Saskatchewan, the city of Saskatoon, and the University of Saskatchewan. Ten Universities, including McMaster, were co-applicants to CFI, but there is participation from essentially every university in Canada. On the user side, the project is being coordinated by the Canadian Institute for Synchrotron Radiation (CISR), an organization of over 300 Canadian synchrotron light users.
Stephen Urquhart (Ph.D. '97) standing beside a scanning transmission X-ray microscopeHow will this affect the Department of Chemistry at McMaster? Adam Hitchcock plays a leading role in the project, as part of the CISR and CLS executive. His research program has made extensive use of synchrotron radiation for many years, with a wide range of materials studied by X-ray absorption. His current focus is polymer microstructure and bio-polymer interfaces studied by X-ray spectromicroscopy. In his recent research leave at the ALS, Berkeley, he demonstrated the first X-ray microscopy detection of monolayer protein selective adsorption on a polyurethane at 0.1
m lateral resolution. The technique will be applied to map the interaction of blood proteins with polymers used for blood contact applications. Other chemistry faculty who have used synchrotron light include: Harald Stöver (analysis of polymer microspheres), Mike Brook (electronic structure of Si compounds), John Greedan (mixed valence studies), Michael McGlinchey (electronic structure of organometallic compounds); Jim Britten (crystallography of ultra-small crystals); associate members Bob Pelton (polymer analysis), Dan Yang (protein crystallography) and David Brown (solution/solid structures). There are many other synchrotron light users in Physics, Biochemistry, Pathology, Engineering, etc. with a total of about 30 McMaster faculty involved. There will be tremendous growth in this area when CLS begins operation - especially for research in materials (Brockhouse Institute of Materials Research) and biological macromolecular chemistry. The future of synchrotron research in Canada is bright indeed!
The second annual CLS users meeting took place Nov. 13, 1999 at the University of Saskatchewan. For further information about the Canadian Light Source please visit the CLS website at cls.usask.ca.
Adam Hitchcock
Professor and Chair of the Board,
Canadian Institute for Synchrotron Radiation
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