The UVSOR Synchrotron Facility (UVSOR-III Synchrotron) is one of the most advanced low-energy synchrotron radiation (SR) facilities in the world and belongs to the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS), an inter-university research institute of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS). The inter-university research institutes are supported by MEXT (the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan) to provide opportunities for academic researchers to engage together in activities aimed at exploring future sciences and to utilize large-scale facilities such as SR facilities. They also serve as an international core base to promote cooperation and exchange with overseas research institutes and researchers.
The UVSOR-III has an electron storage ring of 53 m-circumference and experimental stations on 6 undulator and 8 dipole beamlines. There were not so many SR facilities in the world, when the UVSOR started its operation in 1983. Meanwhile, the SR-related technology has been developed, hence lots of unique SR facilities were constructed in the world. The UVSOR Synchrotron Facility developed successfully the continuous upgrade of the light source and beamlines from UVSOR-I to UVSOR-II and from UVSOR-II to UVSOR-III. Even today, the UVSOR-III realizes the one of the top-level performance in the low-energy SR. On the other hand, the development in the instrumental has progressed markedly. The UVSOR-III will make a progress on the imaging-related techniques to encourage the molecular science community. Molecular science is now growing up as an interdisciplinary science covering not only chemical and physical sciences but also biosciences and not only molecular scale but also nano and meso scale scales. The advanced SR-related instruments will offer opportunities to reveal the nature of properties and functions. We hope many users will perform excellent work by utilizing the UVSOR-III as a unique international hub for SR research in molecular science.
Satoshi Kera, Director
