ALBA (synchrotron)

Interior of ALBA synchrotron, September 2010

ALBA (meaning "Sunrise" in Catalan and in Spanish) is a 3 GeV, third-generation synchrotron light source facility located in the Barcelona Synchrotron Park in Cerdanyola del Vallès near Barcelona, in Catalonia (Spain). It was constructed and is operated by CELLS (sp: Consorcio para la Construcción, Equipamiento y Explotación del Laboratorio de Luz de Sincrotrón, the Consortium for the Exploitation of the Synchrotron Light Laboratory), and co-financed by the Spanish central administration and regional Catalan Government.[1][2]

After nearly ten years of planning and design work by the Spanish scientific community, the project was approved in 2002 by the Spanish and the regional Catalan governments. After scientific workshops and meetings with prospective users, the facility was redesigned in 2004, and in 2006 construction started. The laboratory was officially opened for experiments on seven beamlines in March 2010.

According to lightsources.org, ALBA was opened to users in May 2012.[2]

As of 2023, some of the research done using ALBA includes:

  1. ^ "Sincrotrón ALBA: La importancia de la luz" [Synchrotron ALBA: The importance of light] (PDF). Promateriales (in Spanish) (34). 16 December 2011. Retrieved 18 November 2020.
  2. ^ a b "ALBA". Lightsources. 25 September 2017. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  3. ^ "Magnetotactic microorganisms studied through materials science and advanced imaging".
  4. ^ "Towards greener chemical processes with a new catalyst for ethylene hydroformylation".