1 Introduction

The ALBA Synchrotron light source [1] provides extended research capabilities and a wide range of state-of-the-art instrumentation to academic and industrial users of the Spanish and European Research Area. The industrial program directly impacts the economic growth by showing industrial leaders of Spain new development opportunities and ultimately windows of innovation for their businesses. ALBA plays also an influential role in science tutoring and education, preparing young scientists, engineers and technicians for their national and international careers. And it delivers to the Spanish research and policy community another gate to the larger European research network and infrastructures specially through the participation in LEAPS, the League of European Accelerator-based Photon Sources [2], and is one of the players of the recently published European Strategy for Accelerator-based Photon Sources (ESAPS 2022 [3]).

Significant progress in accelerator design, X-ray optics, detection technology, and Information Technology drives worldwide the evolution of synchrotron light sources to the fourth generation, opening new windows to the exploration of inner details of matter, devices, and their functionality. ALBA is ready to leap from the third to the fourth generation and give birth to ALBA II, by combining the partial substitution of the accelerators with the upgrade of the existing instrumentation and the addition of new cutting-edge beamlines (BLs).

ALBA II will extend with its long BLs in the nearby plots [see Fig. 1, where ASTIP (ALBA Science-Technology-Innovation Park)] [4] is proposed to be built. The combination of a large research infrastructure and a science and technology park in the entourage of the Barcelona universities and research centers and the proximity of the Autonomous University of Barcelona [5] will foster research and create innovation and economic growth, and a unique high-tech company incubator for Spain will be provided.

Fig. 1
figure 1

ALBA and future ALBA II extension

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In summary, ALBA II will be an essential instrument to provide answers to the growing research demands caused by the ecological, energy, health and economic challenges of the twenty-first century and to achieve the goals of the society of the future. In particular, it will contribute to European programs, such as those defined in the Next Generation Europe or Horizon Europe plan, and the Spanish State Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation [6].

2 ALBA present

ALBA Synchrotron is managed by the Consortium for the Construction, Equipment and Exploitation of a Synchrotron Light Laboratory (CELLS) and, since 2012, is in operation for external users. It is a member of the Spanish Map of Infraestructuras Científico Técnicas Singulares (ICTS) [7] and is a non-profit public entity participated by the Spanish and Catalan Governments. As a national synchrotron light source, ALBA priorities focus on the needs of the existing Spanish academic, industrial and entrepreneurial user community as well as to develop potential new communities which can greatly benefit from the facility and create new opportunities for the society. ALBA has also developed a role in facilitating networking between different communities and ultimately develop system solutions in concert with them.

ALBA is a third generation, 3 GeV synchrotron source, with 10 operating BLs and four more at different stages of construction. It operates 24 h in 4–5 week runs all year long, accumulating almost 6000 h per year of operation. The operation of the accelerator systems is highly reliable and reaches an average availability of over 98%.

The BLs are grouped into three scientific sections which reflect their main utilization and which cover three strategic areas: Life Science, Chemical and Materials Sciences, and Magnetic and Electronic Structure. All of them are oversubscribed, with an average overbooking factor of 2. The community of users served by ALBA has grown ten times from the start of operations, having reached more than 6500 national and international users. The great level of collaboration between visiting scientists and expert staff are key element of the evolution of the community. The result of that intense activity is a total of more than 2700 scientific publications, with a high average impact factor. The user program has reached full maturity with an average of + 38 peer reviewed papers per operational BL over the past two years. The averaged impact factor keeps increasing (7.2 in 2020, 8.3 in 2021 and 10.0 in 2022), as well as the number of publications having an impact factor greater than 7 (37% in 2020, 40% in 2021 and 50% in 2022).

Dedicated and advanced proprietary services have strengthened the industrial community supporting its technological innovation. ALBA has served so far more than 70 different companies, of which 53% national and 47% international. Around 500 h per year in average in the last 6 years have been provided to proprietary users. ALBA industrial users, of which 37% are small and medium enterprises (SME), belong mainly to the pharmaceutical (45%), additive manufacturing (22%), nanotechnology and high-tech materials (22%), polymers (20%). Fueled by the strategic decisions of focusing on energy material research, the contributions of the battery sector are increasing, having reached now up to 12%.

ALBA has adopted the Open Science principles in all public research and is a member of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Partnership, aiming at providing the computational infrastructure necessary for future data reanalysis. This will boost the future scientific output and integrate ALBA user community into the bigdata world, increasing significantly the impact on the scientific progress and the economic innovation process.

Following previous socio-economic impact studies, the ex-ante one in 2004 [8] and the ex-post one in 2010 [9], at the end of the construction, an innovation impact study has been carried out within the framework of the H2020 RI-PATHS project [10]. The study analyzed the scientific impact and its spillovers into the society especially into the companies, unveiling that hundreds of patents worldwide cited ALBA publications in a direct or indirect way, covering a wide range of fields.

ALBA is in the spotlight of the general public, especially students, attracting thousands of visitors during Open Days and providing across the year highly demanded in person and on-line guided tours. The “Misión ALBA” born in 2018 is geared to engage young children to the scientific process, reaching so far more than 35,000 students and their 700 teachers from all over Spain. Efficient training and dissemination programs toward vocational students, school students, high school teachers, undergraduates and early stage researchers have been developed to raise curiosity and to better prepare the future scientists.

3 ALBA future

ALBA will maintain its relevance in the future research infrastructure landscape by upgrading to a fourth generation light source, ALBA II, which is planned to become fully operational at the end of 2031. The design, construction and part of the installation will be carried out over the next years, while ALBA continues operating. This will allow ALBA to host users from the synchrotrons that are shut down for renovation, evidencing the importance of European collaborations and coordination within LEAPS. The dark period, in the years 2030 and 2031, will be dedicated to the installation and commissioning of the new light source. At the time of writing (Spring 2023), an initial funding for the design study and the prototyping has been granted, as well as an extra plot for the enlargement of the infrastructure, while the multi-annual plan for the full budget is in negotiation with the funding agencies.

The new adjacent plot allows the construction of up to three long experimental lines, as shown in Fig. 1. Their experimental stations can also be the seed for ASTIP, a proposed advanced center for material science, life sciences and innovation, in collaboration with other institutions, whose feasibility is in discussion with several partners,

The ALBA II project consists of four main actions:

  • Renovation of the accelerator structure and adaptation of the corresponding infrastructures.

  • Construction of long BLs. Design, construction and installation are carried out while operating ALBA, commissioning is postponed to the new source availability.

  • Renovation of operational BLs, including data storage and analysis system. All 14 current BLs, including those under construction, will be overhauled, partly due to the fact that they have been in operation for more than one decade and partly to adapt them to the new brighter photon beam.

  • Development of further capabilities for automatization, simulation, prototyping, nanotechnology and advanced optics.

Few other light ports are still available and this open the possibility to consolidate collaborations with other institutions that may be interested in developing joint projects.

By substantially contributing to ALBA II construction, the Spanish and European research instrumentation industry is provided with opportunities to develop products and train their personnel in accelerator and X-ray technologies, competitively entering a global growth market characterized by the struggle of satisfying the increased request caused by many simultaneous synchrotron upgrade projects worldwide.

Environmental sustainability is incorporated in the ALBA II design and construction at different levels, starting with the definition of buildings and services, continuing with specific requirements on call for tenders or detailed specifications of the constructive design. ALBA II is giving way to modern resource and energy consumption schemes resulting in more efficiency and less environmental impact.

The assessment of the socio-economic impact of ALBA II in the local and in the Spanish environment, done by the same authors of the previously mentioned ones, demonstrates the increased profit of the new investments with respect to the past, thanks to the effectiveness of building-up the upgrade on the existing infrastructures.

4 Science from ALBA to ALBA II

ALBA has developed in collaboration with the user community a holistic approach with focus on the big scientific, economic and ecologic challenges our society faces. Building on the operational excellence, this strategy pivots around multimodal characterization, in situ and operando capabilities, fast accessible high-throughput capabilities, and finally the participation on the big data world. ALBA II, with its boost of microscopic and imaging abilities in combination with the extended energy range, reduced beam size, and improved data pipelines, will fully support this strategy, allowing to extend the approach to a broader, more complex sample set with a strong focus on applied science and industrial needs.

ALBA is developing its new services and infrastructures motivated by the needs of three focus areas, namely life science, including structural molecular and integrated biology; energy, especially catalysis for carbon neutral economies and batteries for short-term storage and electro-mobility; and information technology enabling the digital transformation, mainly focusing on emerging technologies and materials but extending to state-of-the-art device structures with increasing microscopy capabilities. Developed for these three areas, serving as pilot projects for baselining and measuring the effectiveness, ALBA will prioritize the development of tools based on the general usability of a broad user community and their impact on the scientific and economic driver-technologies. By embedding the developments into the three scientific sections, we will also ensure the fast and easy role out of new services to the broad existing user community of ALBA. In the following, a relevant scientific result for each of the focus area is shown, highlighting how ALBA II will open new frontiers in each field.

4.1 Life science

An example for the importance of the multimodal methodology can be seen in the development of correlative microscopy as it is needed in cellular biology, pharmacology, and ultimately in medicine [11]. Figure 2 shows the spatial distribution of a newly developed Ir-based drug, called ACC25, within a treated human breast cancer (MCF7) cell and at the same time a high-resolution presentation of the cell and its organelles.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Determination of intracellular location of Ir in human breast cancer MCF7 cells. a Overlay of Soft X-ray microscopic imaging (gray) and epifluorescence signal (green, mitochondria; red, acidic organelles) after treatment with 1 μM ACC25 for 12 h. b Ir distribution imaged by 2D XRF on the same cell. c Overlay of the epifluorescence mitochondria signal (green) with a mask generated using the Ir signal shown in b. The two signals correlate to each other. d Selected area of the cell from a, as an overlap of two reconstructed slices from the cryo-SXT and the XRF tomography, respectively (XRF acquisition area squared in yellow). Ir densities are shown. e and f Compare slices across the mitochondria from the cryo-SXT and the XRF tomography results of the same area, illustrating the location and concentration of Ir signal inside mitochondria. g shows the 3D rendering of the yellow square area in d after segmentation of the organelles. Scale bars: a–d 5 μm; e and f 1 μm; g 2 μm [11]

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By combining the information content and the various resolutions of the different microscopic techniques, in particular relatively low-resolution epifluorescence light microscopy to identify the mitochondria, high-resolution soft X-ray full field tomography to visualize the cell morphology and specifically the boundaries of the individual mitochondria, and finally a hard X-ray fluorescence scanning microscopy to identify the position of the individual Ir-complex within the cell. The essential result of this work is the proof that the Ir-complex is predominantely absorbed by the mitochondria of the cancerous cells, explaining the high effectiveness with relatively low side effects of the new drug.

Over the past 10 years, ALBA was spearheading the high-resolution soft X-ray microscopy program of cells and small volume tissues with the start of the user program at MISTRAL BL. Gaining a world leading role in this field, the program is currently adding high-resolution cryo-Structured Illumination Microscopy (cryo-SIM) allowing 3D super-resolution fluorescence cryo-imaging. With FAXTOR, a hard X-ray medium/high-resolution tomography BL currently in construction, and MIRAS, a high-resolution IR-microscopy BL, the program includes also the area of tissue in integrated biology. With ALBA II, additional essential building blocks can be integrated within the portfolio: a bio hard X-ray nanoprobe, sample preparation facilities and protocols, plus methodologies and ultimately data pipelines facilitating the easy use of all these tools to provide the answer to the problem instead of individual data sets. XALOC, a MX BL with focus on high throughput, and XAIRA, a micro-focus MX BL, extend the program into the structural molecular biology which is also supported by a SAXS program at NCD-SWEET and a new cryo-EM instrument, part of a partnership with other institutions, which includes also sample preparation facilities.

4.2 Energy materials

The development of a new catalytic material to facilitate the Syngas production from excessive CO2 exhaust gas, like originated during the steel or cement production, is another excellent example for the need of the multimodal approach. It also sheds light on the importance to expand this approach beyond imaging to integrate ensemble averaging techniques and at the same time to allow operando and in situ conditions, ultimately giving insights in the structure, in the reaction pathway and the corresponding active sites. Figure 3 shows the High-Resolution Transmission Electron Microscope (HRTEM) image of a newly developed Ru–C catalyst which delivers, despite the early stage of the development, unprecedented performance in yield and selectivity [12].

Fig. 3
figure 3

Development of highly efficient and selective Ru–C catalyst utilizing HRTEM, ambient pressure XPS, and high-resolution powder diffraction [12]

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Typical for most industrially relevant catalysts, the system has to perform a wide range of intermediate steps like activating hydrogen, or creating CO and OH like species at defects or interfaces to finally create CH4 and H2O from CO2 and H2. The complex morphology, with all characteristic sizes and length scales of particles and interfaces, has essential impact on the final catalytic outcome. Characterizing the morphology and its changes during the reaction itself, and correlating specifics with the catalytic behavior is essential for the optimization process making the operando aspect to a key for this field. In the given example, the ambient pressure XPS data of different catalysts with varying structure, shown in Fig. 3b, were revealing metallic Ru as well as surface close RuC like materials which both play an important role to facilitate the reaction. However, a high-resolution powder diffraction experiment was clearly establishing that there are individual metallic Ru nanoparticles of a characteristic size and strongly distorted RuC-O particles and not a mixture of RuO and RuC particles, hinting the importance of defects and their mobility for the performance. These models are consistent with the HRTEM image shown in Fig. 3 using the ensemble averaging character of ambient pressure XPS, part of the CIRCE BL, and powder diffraction, performed at MSPD BL, ensures that the HRTEM image is representative for the full catalytic sample.

ALBA has developed strong catalysis programs on many BLs performing various spectroscopic and scattering techniques over the past 10 years. The program is supported by CLAESS, a hard X-ray spectroscopy BL with emission capabilities; NOTOS, a hard X-ray BL allowing spectroscopy and diffraction on the identical sample and optimized for operando experiments and NCD-SWEET, the SAXS BL, besides CIRCE/NAPP and MSPD as already mentioned. With the definition of the focus areas, an analysis of possible synergies between the individual programs was performed and first pilot projects for multimodal approaches were developed; as a consequence, the operando conditions on the different BLs are being brought to the same standards allowing exchange of equipment and at the same time the easy access for users. To minimize failures of often complex operando experiments, offline test and staging capabilities are currently implemented and combined with auxiliary non-X-ray based probes. The integration of an environmental HRTEM program with a dedicated effort to develop data pipelines, appropriate to participate on the big data approach and allowing data analytics on multimodal data sets, in combination with the new microscopic tools, enabled by ALBA II, will complete these efforts. In respect to the impact on innovation and the fast development of new catalysts up to the high Technological Readiness Levels, ALBA II will also strengthen its high-throughput capabilities building on the current data pipeline developments and specific investments in automatization and updating user access polices, simplifying and accelerating the fast access and ensuring the availability for long development projects.

4.3 Information technology

Figure 4 shows the results of a lensless coherent imaging experiments visualizing the magnetic domain structure of Co8Zn8Mn4 [13]. Using the difference of the diffraction pattern from a thin film (in transmission), originated by left and right circular polarized light at the Co L3 edge, the retrieved images show the magnetic texture of the thin film, more precisely the magnetic moment of Co aligned perpendicular to the image plane; red (blue) indicates parallel (anti-parallel) alignment with the magnetic field. The images were taken during cooling and warming in magnetic field of 70mT. At 120 K, close to the transition temperature of the material, strongly elongated Skyrmions are visible.

Fig. 4
figure 4

Real-space magnetic textures of a Co8Zn8Mn4 sample, retrieved from a right/left circular polarized light resonant soft X-ray scatter (RSXS) pattern; the shown retrieval was taken at the Co L3 edge (E = 779 eV) at different temperatures: a T = 20 K, b T = 100 K, and c T = 120 K and applied magnetic field B = 70 mT. The transformation of the elongated skyrmions to a more conventional shape with corresponding expansion takes place at T = 120 K. The achieved resolution using a holographic and a iterative phase retrieval algorithm is roughly 30 nm [13]

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Besides the scientific value of these investigations, the team also focused on the technique of lensless imaging itself. Using a sample geometry which allows to create directly a holographic magnetic image, using a mask structure which uses an overlapping reference beam as well as the diffracted bean. In addition, a conventional RSXS pattern difference was measured and the results of the holographic approach and the conventional iterative phase retrieval algorithm compared. Both experiments create the identical real-space magnetic structures with significantly larger efforts on the sample preparation for the holographic approach but simple data analysis in comparison to the iterative phase retrieval algorithm. The achieved resolution was in both cases 30 nm.

This experiment is a good baselining for future imaging experiments at BOREAS beamline, which also provides a strong XMCD program, using the highly coherent flux of the diffraction limited source of ALBA II. This experiment shows that fast data acquisition is possible and resolutions of 5–10 nm can be achieved, making this technique to a key imaging tool within the portfolio to characterize device structures. In addition, an upgraded aberration corrected Photoelectron Emission Microscope (PEEM) at CIRCE-PEEM and an optimized soft X-ray full field transmission microscope at MISTRAL, all capable to measure the magnetic moment distribution, will create a powerful toolset at ALBA II to image chemistry, elemental distribution and magnetism/electron polarization in a high-resolution mode (up to 5 nm). The programs capabilities to probe the band structure will also be extended to complex device structures with an upgraded LOREA, an Angle Resolved Photoelectron Emission Spectroscopy (ARPES) beamline, currently operating and providing at ALBA II a reduced beam size in the nanometer regime.

5 ALBA II accelerator, sources and beamlines

5.1 Storage ring upgrade

The upgrade will transform ALBA into a diffraction limited storage ring. It will be a cost and time effective process, to be realized before the end of the decade and profiting at maximum all existing infrastructures, in particular the building which is now hosting the facility, following the successful example of ESRF-EBS [14]. The injector, the accelerator tunnel and the insertion devices (IDs) will be maintained, implying only minor modifications to existing BLs. The 3 GeV electron energy will be maintained, while the nominal current will be increased from present 250 to 300 mA.

The ALBA II lattice, fitting the 270 m long circumference, is quite compact and with an extremely optimized design. It is based on a six bend achromat cell (6BA) configuration [15], which reduces the present horizontal natural emittance by about a factor of 30, keeping the same cell length. The overall ring symmetry is preserved: the lattice is composed by 16 cells organized in four quadrants. All arcs have the same lattice (see Fig. 5). The first and last dipoles in the arc section are shorter and act as dispersion suppressors. The arc bending magnets are interleaved with strong and compact focusing quadrupoles. A weak defocusing gradient is incorporated into the main bending magnets and a weak anti-bend component in the focusing quadrupoles. Four straight sections have high-betas, one for the injection, two for RF cavities and one is available for one ID. The betas at the ends of the unit cells are tuned to match the electron beam phase space as close as possible to the radiation emitted by the insertion devices and maximize the brilliance. The main lattice parameters are shown in Table 1.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Optical functions for a quadrant of the storage ring

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Table 1 Main parameters of ALBA II Storage Ring lattice
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The initial chromaticity correction is based on a distributed two-families sextupole scheme, for a total of 20 sextupoles per cell resulting in a dynamic aperture exceeding ± 6 mm in the horizontal plane at the injection point, compatible with the considered injection scheme. The application of genetic algorithms for further optimizing the dynamic aperture with multiple sextupole families is undergoing.

The high magnetic field density requirements for the magnets imply very small vacuum chambers radius and the use of the new NEG coating technology with state-of-the-art functionalities. Initial considerations assume that the smallest magnet aperture is 20 mm, with an effective vacuum chamber of about 16 mm in diameter. Detailed design of the different sections is now on-going, as shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6
figure 6

Layout of the arc in the ALBA II storage ring

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The ALBA 500 MHz RF system is maintained, with the addition of a third harmonic system to increase bunch length and lifetime and decrease Intrabeam Scattering effect. Under investigation is the round beam operation for a substantial improvement of the lifetime.

Beam diagnostics for ensuring the high stability of the low emittance beam will be distributed along the ring profiting all available space among magnets. Examples are the pinhole camera emittance monitors [16] measuring also energy spread. Beam stability better than 10% of the beam size will be guaranteed by a Fast Orbit Feedback (FOFB) system which will use the 10 kHz data stream from 144 BPMs around the ring. XBPMs will also be located in each front-end and the possibility of using them into the FOFB will be studied for those BLs which will need it. Corrector magnets will be implemented as extra winding in sextupoles inside the cells, keeping the system very compact, and as stand-alone devices in the straight sections.

The existing ALBA booster, thanks to its large circumference, delivers a beam emittance as small as 9 nm rad, suitable for the injection into the upgraded storage ring. The injection scheme is based on a single fast pulsed multipole kicker magnet, the Double Dipole Kicker (DDK), a 400 mm long in air kicker, composed of 8 conductor rods fixed on a ceramic vacuum chamber, titanium coated on the inner surface. A prototype to be installed and tested in the existing ALBA ring is being built.

The development and verification of the magnets’ designs by means of adequate prototypes are taking place during the period 2022–2025 within the framework of the project “Enabling technologies for ALBA II”, funded through Recovery Funds.

Nine different magnet types are used in the lattice, for a total of 592 individual magnets, more than doubling the present ALBA numbers. Conventional EM technology is adopted to define a baseline design for all magnets. In a second stage, the possibility of using hybrid designs for some particular types of magnets will be explored. ALBA participates in PerMaLIC [17] collaboration within LEAPS, for developing permanent magnets (PM) for accelerators, and lowering power consumption.

5.2 Photon sources

A total portfolio of 26 BL ports will be available at ALBA II. Even if the layout of the new storage ring differs from the present one, the displacement of the existing BLs has been minimized: only two of the existing ID BLs will need realignment.

From the point of view of the beam optics, the straight sections will be identical (βx = 1.98 m, βy = 2.30 m) with the exception of the injection straight and those at 90° intervals from it, which will have higher beta values (βx = 11.74 m, βy = 10.02 m).

The photon flux and coherence of existing IDs will strongly benefit from the foreseen 30-fold decrease in the electron beam emittance. Figure 7 left shows a comparison between the spectral brilliance calculated for the undulators in ALBA and ALBA II. The expected brilliance increase will depend on the photon beam energy: from a factor 6 at 100 eV up to a factor 20 at 10 keV. For the wigglers, there is a smaller gain in brilliance which depends on the effective source size. Figure 7 right shows the increase in the horizontal coherent fraction, which measures how close the source is to the diffraction limit, ranging from a factor 2 at low energy up to a factor 30 at high energies. In addition, the availability of long BLs will allow exploiting transverse coherence also at higher photon energies.

Fig. 7
figure 7

Left: Comparison of the spectral brilliance for undulators operating in the present (ALBA, 1% coupling, dashed lines) and the upgraded (ALBA II, 100% coupling, solid lines) storage ring, for the same electron beam current (250 mA). Right: Evolution of horizontal coherent fraction with ALBA upgrade. Dashed lines correspond to present storage ring (ALBA, 1% coupling) and solid lines to the upgraded one (ALBA II, 100% coupling). Results obtained using SPECTRA within Gaussian approximation

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The reduction of the horizontal beam size will allow round vacuum chambers in the straight sections, opening the door to IDs with magnetic material surrounding the electron beam, as Delta-type [18] or APPLE X [19] undulators. It is also foreseen to explore the development of superconducting undulators increasing the available photon energy.

Thirteen bending magnets BLs can be allocated in ALBA II, including the four ones already in use. Some source points are displaced with respect to now, in particular six sources will have a − 2.5° displacement. The magnetic field will decrease corresponding to a reduction of the critical energy from 8.5 to 6.1 keV, benefiting those BLs operating at photon energies below 4 keV. Those operating at higher energies will use as source a Superbend based on the PM design developed at SIRIUS [20], with a peak magnetic field up to 3T.

5.3 Experimental beamlines

All BLs will be upgraded in different aspects, in order to benefit from the features of the new source. For instance, most optical elements currently installed have surface errors that would limit the spot size and the photon flux density achievable on sample and would introduce significant structures and inhomogeneities in the photon beam. BLs and experimental stations will require more accurate and stable positioning systems, as well as faster scanning systems.

The increased flux on sample of ALBA II (see Fig. 8) will allow collecting data with sufficient statistics using shorter acquisition times, improving the sensitivity limit of many experimental stations. The BLs, including mechanics, detector and control system, must be prepared to run the experiment at the required speed. In addition, the reduced dimensions of the beam will lead to tighter stability requirements, not just on scanning components, but on every component interacting with the beam. Finally, the higher acquisition rate at the experimental station will require the BL to be free of mechanical resonances in a wider range of frequencies than for ALBA.

Fig. 8
figure 8

Increase in the angular flux density of the source at 12.6 keV

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Those increased demands on speed, accuracy and stability will be faced with improvements on components. From a mechanical design perspective, systems will be more compact, with simpler kinematic chains, and working in close loop using feedback from encoders and interferometers. Continuous scans at high speed, synchronizing multiple axes during the experiment will be the routine mode of operation.

In ALBA II, the amount of data generated in the BLs will increase by several orders of magnitude with respect to the present thanks to the much higher X-ray flux, combined with the hundreds of kHz frame rates attained by the newest detectors. Furthermore, the ALBA II users will not be able to store or process the outcome from the experiments using standard computers. Guaranteeing their scientific success will require providing them with external access to the data and to the High-Performance Computing clusters needed for processing it, and, just as necessary, adequate software applications to exploit these types of infrastructures. The future BLs would have to adapt their capabilities to the available computing resources. To this end, serving the required IT infrastructure and the proper software design is considered an integral part of any future BL construction.

In addition, proper metadata ingestion will be necessary for future reuse and completeness of the information and data pipelines will need to process a greater variety of data sources requiring custom software design to enable it.

6 Partnerships

A user facility is a composite system where research activities not only coexist with technological developments of cutting-edge instruments, but nurture them with a rich exchange of ideas, needs, and innovative solutions. Such an environment offers opportunities of establishing partnerships between the Research Infrastructure and Research Institutions or Universities, reinforcing their links, sharing resources, and finally being more efficient in solving societal challenges. The evolution of ALBA toward ALBA II foresees a renewed attention to partnering with national and international institutions. Some of the initiatives are already in progress and are the seed for future developments.

The Joint Electron Microscopy Center at ALBA (JEMCA) is part of a Catalan Microscopy Platform, with the concerted participation of several institutions. JEMCA includes a 200 kV electron cryo-microscope dedicated to Life Science, owned by the Molecular Biology Institute of Barcelona, IBMB [21] and a 300 kV TEM with Monochromatic Aberration Correctors, dedicated to material science and owned by the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, ICN2 [22]]. Both are hosting users by the end of 2022. The third instrument will be the In situ Correlative installation for Advanced Materials for Energy (In-CAEM), which will allow in situ correlative experiments, combining (S)TEM (Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope), AFM/STM (Atomic Force Microscope/Scanning Tunnel Microscope) instrumentation with synchrotron radiation at different ALBA BLs. It has been funded with a combination of European Next Generation Recovery and regional funds.

The proposal of developing a new scientific and technological center in the vicinity of ALBA, ASTIP aims at activating the evolution from the original synchrotron facility to a center of excellence for synchrotron radiation science with enhanced capacities in research and innovation. ASTIP is thought as an interdisciplinary innovation hub that blends a unique combination of imaging and characterization tools for complex materials and for biological systems, material growth and detector and device fabrication facilities, big data and data mining capabilities together with a center for boosting industry innovation through the application of the synchrotron light technologies with Infrastructure and environmental sustainability.

7 Timeline

ALBA II will be developed in parallel with the operation of the present ALBA facility. The project spans from 2021 to 2031 and includes the full upgrade of the storage ring, selected upgrades on the operating BLs, up to 4 new BLs, and the necessary upgrades on the infrastructure. The Technical Design Report of the accelerator upgrade will be prepared between 2022 and 2024. The procurement of the new storage ring will start in 2025. The construction of the different parts should finish in 2029, to proceed in 2030 with the installation and the commissioning in 2031. A review of the operating BLs has taken place during 2021 and its outcome defines the extent of the upgrades that will take place before the dark period.

For the new BLs, a competitive call opened in 2021 has been used to select the 14th BL, which is funded through NGEU funds and that shall be completed by 2025. The other three BLs that will enter into operation with ALBA II will be selected during 2023, and their construction will be finished around 2030.