Cryo-Transmission Electron Microscope. Photographer: Joanna Kowalik
PHELIX beamline. Photographer: Joanna Kowalik
Aerial view of SOLARIS. Photographer: Aleksander Koczur
The SOLARIS synchrotron is the most modern and largest multidisciplinary research tool in Poland. Moreover, its outstanding capabilities place it firmly at the cutting edge of devices of this type in the world. It was created as a result of an unprecedented collaboration between the National Synchrotron Radiation Centre and the MAX IV Laboratory, a research facility hosted by Lund University in Sweden. Thus SOLARIS is a replica of one of the two synchrotrons in Lund. Its storage ring consists of 12 identical Double-Bend Achromat (DBA) cells. The typical DBA cell contains two bending magnets flanked with strong focusing quadrupoles and sextupoles. In order to reduce the number of magnets, a few magnet functions have been combined and integrated into one solid iron block within a cell. This innovative technology makes it possible to obtain a very low emittance electron beam circulating in the machine of a relatively small size.
SOLARIS National Synchrotron Radiation Centre functions as a part of Jagiellonian University. The Centre has been opened since the 21st of September 2015 and it is the first synchrotron in Poland and the only one in East and Central Europe.
The Centre has been opened for Users since 2018 and at the beginning of 2022, SOLARIS facilitates the five beamlines, operating in the range of radiation from UV to soft X-ray, providing various experimental techniques. At the PIRX beamline, the Users can exploit X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XANES region, X-ray absorption near edge structure) and magnetic dichroism. The main technique at the URANOS beamline is Angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy (ARPES). The PHELIX beamline based on two methods, ARPES and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XANES). The DEMETER beamline offers two end-stations: Scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM) and Photoemission electron microscopy (PEEM).
The main technique available at recently opened ASTRA beamline isX-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAFS, X-ray absorption fine structure) dedicated to many scientific field, for example the historical artefacts, the elemental composition of paints as well as monoatomic catalyst investigations.
Next three new beamlines are under construction and they will be open in the next years. Three of them will use hard X-ray and one of them- infrared radiation in the wide range spectra. In 2023, we plan to open for Users POLYX beamline. POLYX will be destined to multimodal X-ray imaging. It will let researches obtain 2-D and 3-D information on morphological structure of objects, elemental composition, and crystallographic phases in investigated samples. SOLCRYS beamline will be located in the new experimental hall with an area of 2000 m2. It will offer X-ray diffraction and Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) techniques, and it will be especially useful in protein crystallography. Among them, there is a CIRI beamline, using infrared radiation, suitable to chemical analysis in microscale and investigation of intramolecular interactions. In total, the beamlines will be fitted with about twenty end-stations.

Contact
National Synchrotron Radiation Centre SOLARIS
Jagiellonian University
Czerwone Maki 98
30-392 Krakow,
Poland
Tel: +48 12 664 40 00
Email: synchrotron@uj.edu.pl