Innovation: Bright spark of hope: The Advanced Light Source will allow scientists to sculpt technology on a tinier scale

SUPERCOMPUTERS that fit into the palm of the hand and microscopic machines to monitor the heart may sound like science fiction, but their arrival on the market could be hastened by a development at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California.

The laboratory, operated by the University of California and financed by the US Department of Energy, has spent dollars 100m ( pounds 68m) building the most advanced synchrotron light source of its kind in the world. It is capable of extracting, from speeding electrons, laser-like beams of X-ray and ultraviolet light that are 20 to 100 times brighter than beams from similar radiation sources.

The Advanced Light Source (ALS) facility will open to scientists and businesses from all over the world later this month. IBM has already joined a team of universities and government laboratories in building a beam line there. Daniel Auerbach, manager of physical science at IBM's Almaden Research Centre, explained its involvement by saying: 'We expect the ALS will enable us to conduct important scientific studies of interesting materials, surfaces and interfaces with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity. We are also anxious to use the ALS to help us develop some powerful new ways for examining those magnetic materials and structures that may prove to be very important for future data storage technologies.'

Other companies in the computer and biotechnology industries are negotiating with the laboratory for time on the five beam lines that are more generally available to the public. Eventually up to 70 beam lines will be able to extract and condition the light. Keith Jackson, associate director of the laboratory's centre for X-ray optics, said companies are clearly interested in the commercial applications that may result from the ALS.

He added that 'the lab's challenge is to come up with a way of convincing companies that their research will remain proprietary when they use shared facilities'.

One of the commercial applications of the ALS will be 'nanotechnology', which is still in its infancy but is expected to become a big industry within the next two decades. Today, computer chips are manufactured by photo-lithography - using a beam of light to transfer intricate patterns from a mask on to the surface of a silicon material. Nanotechnology will use X-rays instead of visible light.

Because X-rays have a much shorter wavelength than visible light, they can be used to transfer much more intricate patterns, with features as tiny as 1/1000th the thickness of a human hair. This will allow scientists to make two-dimensional devices such as gigabit memory chips about 1 60 th the size of today's most powerful computer chips. LBL describes this as 'like carving with a scalpel, rather than a sword'. Before long, the technology is expected to lead to personal digital assistants, with the power of today's supercomputers, that fit in the palm of the hand.

However, some scientists at LBL are even more excited about the possibilities that the ALS opens up in the field of three-dimensional or 'deep etch' X-ray lithography. This technique allows engineers to sculpt material in three dimensions and opens the door to manufacturing microscopic devices known as MEMMS or micro-electromagnetic mechanical systems - tiny robot-like machines.

One such MEMMS which is already in production is the thin magnetic film head within the hard disk drive of every personal computer. In 1992 more than 100 million of these devices were manufactured. Their total weight was merely 3.6lb yet they sold for dollars 1.3bn. In the future MEMMS are expected to be used, for example, as toxic gas sensors that fit on to workers' belts, and medical micro-sensors and micro-tools.

One of the other commercial applications of the beams is expected to be 'rationally' designed drugs. If scientists know the exact structure of a protein, they can manufacture drugs to link to the protein, thereby either turning it off or enhancing certain features. Over the past 20 years, scientists have decoded 2,000 proteins and as a result have developed proto-drugs to fight cancer, HIV and influenza. But there are another 48,000 proteins still to be documented. The ALS will allow this work to proceed much more swiftly.

So far, about 10 biotechnology companies have expressed interest in using the beams for this purpose. In addition, the beams will provide materials scientists with a spectroscopic probe that can focus on surface areas a few hundred atoms in diameter, and provide chemists with a camera that can freeze-frame lightning-fast chemical reactions.

'The laboratory can develop fabrication technology and demonstrate with prototypes that certain procedures are possible using X-rays,' Mr Jackson added. 'But without industrial support, these projects won't go anywhere.'

(Photographs omitted)