The article doesn't make this clear, but this is an excellent example of an area where "pure research" and practical technology overlap. Free electron lasers are essentially particle accelerators (of the same sort used in, e.g., the LHC) with special configurations of magnets stuck on the end. They are large, expensive to build, and expensive to operate for essentially all the same reasons that research accelerators are. So advances in physics which lead to advances in accelerator technology, which allow further advances in pure physics, also directly impact the practicality of using FEL X-ray sources for imaging microchips (among other things).