Diamond Light Source is the UK’s national synchrotron facility (3GeV), located at the Harwell Science Campus in Oxfordshire. By accelerating electrons to near light-speed, Diamond generates brilliant beams of light from infrared to X-rays which are used for academic and industry research.

Diamond is a not-for-profit limited company funded as a joint venture by the UK Government via UK Research & Innovation’s (UKRI’s) Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) in partnership with the Wellcome Trust, owning 86% and 14% of the shares respectively.

Diamond is free at point of access through a competitive application process (peer review), provided the results are published in the public domain. Diamond also has proprietary (fee paying) access for those who wish to guarantee access or/and keep their results confidential.

Diamond has a 14,000 strong user community utilising its beamlines (experimental stations) and electron microscopes to address 21^st century challenges and conduct experiments in a wide range of disciplines including structural biology, health and medicine, solid-state physics, materials and magnetism, nanoscience, electronics, earth and environmental sciences, chemistry, cultural heritage, energy and engineering. Diamond began initial operations with 7 beamlines in 2007, with the 33^rd becoming operational in 2021.

Diamond has many Special Peformance beamlines including:

- I12 (Joint Engineering, Environmental & Processing) - which will be able to provide tomographic data on large engineering components of up to 2 tonnes, with a scanning area of 1m x 1m under real world conditions - a unique feature in Europe and the world. It has a high intensity beam for undertaking diffraction and imaging experiments. (Currently operational).

- I20 (Versatile X-ray Spectroscopy) has a four-bounce monochromator which will allow constant energy resolution and spectral purity of the x-ray beam, in contrast with the other spectroscopybeamlines in Europe. (Operational in 2012).

- I09 (Surfaces & interface structural analysis) isunique in it's ability to analyse samples with both hard and soft X-rays.