Almost £100m has been awarded to fund more groundbreaking research at a world class Oxfordshire science facility.

The third phase of funding for the Diamond Light Source has been released with £97.4m allocated by the Government to the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to the project based at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus.

Professor Keith Mason, chief executive of the STFC said: "Since the start of operations in January 2007, Diamond has conducted experiments and delivered world class science in numerous areas ranging from trying to find new treatments for Alzheimers and Parkinson’s disease to investigating ways to clean up the environment.

“This extra money announced by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will ensure Diamond can branch out into yet more fields of research.”

Diamond, which is shaped like a doughnut and employs 400 people, is a giant machine called a synchrotron which uses cutting-edge technology to generate brilliant beams of light, from infra-red to X-rays, to examine the properties of materials at an atomic and molecular level.

This has led to pioneering research in a wide range of fields.

The funding boost, together with a £13.8m contribution from the Wellcome Trust, will add 10 more beamlines to the cutting edge facility, eventually bringing the total to 32.

Prof Gerhard Materlik, chief executive of Diamond Light Source, said: “We are very grateful for the continued support of the UK Government, the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the Wellcome Trust, which has been key to the successes we have achieved so far.

“Together with our wide user community from academia and industry, we have delivered on expectations so far.

“This Phase III capital investment demonstrates our funders’ commitment to the UK science base. The team will now focus on delivering the additional experimental facilities by 2017, which will enable us to increase our scientific outputs by 50 per cent.”