Synchrotron Activity

Our group actively uses X-ray synchrotron sources in India and abroad!!

What is synchrotron?
Synchrotron is a sort of particle accelerator that produces intense beams of light – typically X-rays – that researchers use to peer deep beneath the surfaces of things and explore a phenomenally wide range of scientific issues, from how a drug may stop a virus in its tracks to the chemical composition of an unknown substance or the microscopic structure of a new material.

How does a synchrotron work?

Synchrotrons accelerate charged particles, such as electrons, and keep them moving at more than 99 percent of the speed of light around a closed loop, often a circular ring. Any time charged particles change direction, they emit a cone of light, which is known as synchrotron radiation. At most synchrotrons this light comes in the form of X-rays. Often, electrons are forced to wiggle back and forth through special arrays of magnets called undulators, producing brighter X-rays.

Reason we use synchrotron sources
The extreme brilliance of the Synchrotron X-ray sources offers manyfold advantages over the conventional lab X-ray sources for the study of weakly scattering biophysical systems such as biomembranes. The primary focus is to understand the structure and dynamics of those systems. We use synchrotron X-rays for measuring X-ray reflectivity (XRR), grazing incidence diffraction (GID), small and wide angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) etc. for the structure, dynamics as well as the elemental analysis of samples.

Collaborations
We have active collaborations with the following institutes/large scale facilities for the X-ray and neutron measurements.

1. Indian Beamline at Photon Factory, KEK, Japan (DST-KEK)

2. PETRA-III at Deutsches Electronen Synchrotron (DESY), Germany (India@DESY)

3. Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Lab, USA (link)

4. European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), France (link)

5. INDUS-2, Indore (link)

6. JPARC neutron facility, Japan (link)