Overview of synchrotron radiation facilities

There are 32 laboratories in 12 countries engaged in the operation, construction, or planning of electron storage rings, ranging from a few hundred megaelectronvolts to above 10 GeV, as sources of synchrotron radiation for basic and applied research. More than 6000 scientists now use radiation from 27 operational rings in a wide range of studies in biology, chemistry, and physics and their numerous subfields. About ten more rings intended for research are in construction or design. The new rings are mostly designed with low electron beam emittance and many straight sections to optimize the performance of undulator insertion magnets. In addition, companies in England, Germany, Japan, and the United States are designing and constructing storage rings to produce high fluxes of soft X-rays around 1 keV for the production of integrated circuits with line features of 0.25 μm or less using the X-ray lithographic process. If, as expected, X-ray lithography becomes the technique of choice for the production of submicron structures, perhaps 100 storage rings in the 0.5- to 1-GeV range will be needed by industry. It is also possible that present programs using synchrotron radiation above 30 keV to develop less invasive procedures for coronary angiography will lead to a need for many multigigaelectronvolt rings designed for this purpose