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Infrared Program

Synchrotrons make IR, too!

User Information

How to become a user of the IR beamlines

  1.  Contact Hans and Stephanie to discuss the feasibility of your potential project

  2.  Submit a General User Proposal (GUP), Rapid Access Proposal (RAPIDD), or Approved Program (AP) Proposal

    • General User Proposals (most common) are projects that are seeking to access specific beamlines/endstations over the course of two years in order to establish an ongoing program at the ALS. Proposals are submitted every six months (1st Wednesday in September and 1st Wednesday in March for the following 6 month operation cycles) and are active for up to two years.
    • Rapid Access Proposals are for Users requiring limited amounts of beamtime but with quick access. Proposals may be submitted at any time.
    • Approved Programs grant investigator(s) a percentage of beamtime for up to three years to carry out an extended program of research and development; leading to new beamline equipment, tools, or protocols which will be made available to the general user population. Approved Program deadlines are January 15th and July 15th.

For more information on the proposal process, please see the ALS User Guide and the ALS Apply for Beamtime pages.

Preparing for your beamtime

Bringing materials to the ALS

All materials brought to the experimental floor for beamtime — including equipment and samples — need to be listed on the Experimental Safety Sheet (ESAF).

Equipment

All electronic equipment needs to be either

    • Certified by a national testing lab (i.e. NRTL) OR
    • Approved by the Electronic Maintenance (EM) technicians on site

Details and contact information for testing of electronic equipment can be found on the Electrical Equipment Safety page.

Samples

Any materials brought or shipped to the IR beamlines should include the following information:

Required:

    • Sample containers labeled with contents, proposal number, PI name and contact info, date, contact person for questions, sample storage and handling instructions, shelf stability, and disposal/return instructions
    • Note: all samples must either return to the home institution or be disposed of — the program does not provide sample storage

Requested (especially for remote and Near-Field measurements):

    • Fiducial markers or microscope images indicating region(s) of interest
    • Measurement priority list
    • For quantitative measurements near-field measurements, consider depositing a gold pad on the sample surface or using a gold slide as a substrate to facilitate reference measurements without altering the optical alignment

Please talk to the beamline staff if you have questions about bringing materials to the experimental floor.

Where can I ship samples?

ALS IR group, beamline scientist name
[User’s name]
ALS-User-Sample
Berkeley Lab, B53-0101A
1 Cyclotron Rd
Berkeley, CA 94720

Note: Items shipped to the Lab are delivered to central receiving and typically take one business day to reach the beamlines.  Please plan for your samples to arrive at least two days before your beamtime starts.

Acknowledging Beamtime and Staff Support

For work done in whole, or in part, at the ALS beamlines, include the following in the acknowledgments:

This research used resources of the Advanced Light Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231.

In addition, users are asked to acknowledge the instrument and/or beamline(s), as well as the participation of any beamline staff who may have assisted in any aspect of an experiment.

For answers to frequently asked questions and the terminology used on the program pages, please see the FAQ page.