The synchrotron is a cyclical particle accelorator, where an electric field accelerates the particles and the magnetic field changes their direction; visually it’s a brilhant source of light used to collect information about the structural and chemical properties of organic and inorganic materials.
The synchrotron produces the light using powerful electromagnets and radio waves to accelerate electrons close to the speed of light in storage rings. Each time an electron passes a magnet it loses energy emitting highly concentrated photon radiation. The different wave frequencies like infrared, ultraviolet and X-ray can be channeled out of the wall of the storage rings into the expiremental light lines, where the researchers choose the wavelength to study the samples.
This tool can be used to probe the samples and analyze a large number of biological, physical, chemical and geological processes.
Figure 5.20: Resulting graphic of samples of L. fortunei shells submitted to X-rays diffraction in a Synchrotron.
