Industrial use of synchrotron radiation: a very subjective overview

Synchrotron radiation has become an extremely valuable tool for many areas of basic and applied research. In principle, synchrotron radiation could also be used for all areas of industrial activities: production, quality control and research and development. In this paper, the challenges, the problems, and the advantages of collaborating with industry will be highlighted in a very subjective way based on the experiences of the Bonn SR-group. “Typical” examples for the industrial use of SR will be discussed for all the three fields mentioned above. Emphasis will be placed on R&D examples, as this seems to be the most promising field for an intensified industrial use.