Argonne User Facilities

What is a user facility?

National scientific user facilities provide specialized instrumentation and expertise that enable scientists (i.e., users) to carry out experiments they could not do in their own laboratories. User facilities are among the nation’s premier facilities for research and development, offering technologies and instrumentation available nowhere else, and are shared with the scientific community on a peer-review basis. Operating time is available without charge to scientists who plan to publish their results in the open literature. Proprietary research can be accommodated on a full cost-recovery basis.

What user facilities are located at Argonne?

The following national user facilities are located at or managed by Argonne.  For further information on the capabilities of each facility, as well as the procedures necessary to become a user, click on the facility name.

If you are performing research with biological materials, please also review the Biosafety Procedures.

The Advanced Photon Source (APS) hosts more users annually—about 3,500—than any other user facility in the United States and provides the most brilliant high-energy X-ray beams for research in the Western Hemisphere. These X-rays allow scientists to pursue new knowledge about the structure and function of materials, which means that information in virtually all scientific disciplines can be gained at the APS. These studies promise to have far-reaching impacts on our technology, economy and health, as well as our fundamental knowledge of the materials that make up our world. Register as a user / Proposal Gateway »

The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) provides leadership-class computing resources to the scientific community. The ALCF's mission is to accelerate major scientific discoveries and engineering breakthroughs for humanity by designing and providing world-leading computing facilities in partnership with the computational science community. One of the fastest supercomputers in the world for open science, the IBM Blue Gene/P intrepid at the ALCF, offers a performance of 557 teraflops and a LINPACK speed of 459 teraflops. Register as a user »

The Argonne Tandem Linear Accelerator System (ATLAS) is a leading facility for fundamental nuclear physics research in the vicinity of the Coulomb barrier. It provides a wide range of beams for nuclear reaction and structure research. The full range of all stable ions can be produced in electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion sources, accelerated to energies of 7-20 MeV per nucleon and delivered to one of several target stations instruments with state-of-the-art detector systems. About 20 percent of the beam time is used to generate secondary radioactive beams to study nuclear reactions of astrophysical interest and for nuclear structure investigations. A support group is available to assist users in all preparations for their measurements. Register as a user »

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility provides the world’s most comprehensive observational capabilities for obtaining atmospheric data specifically for climate change research, serving nearly 5,000 registered users from 15 federal and state agencies, 375 universities and 67 countries.  ARM users provide critical information about cloud formation processes, water vapor and aerosols, and their influence of radiative transfer in the atmosphere. Register as a user »

The Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) provides expertise, instruments and infrastructure for interdisciplinary nanoscience and nanotechnology research. The CNM's goal is to support basic research and the development of advanced instrumentation that generates new scientific insights for the discovery, processing, characterization and modeling of innovative nanoscale materials. Register as a user / Proposal Gateway »

The Electron Microscopy Center (EMC) mission is to conduct materials research using advanced microstructural characterization methods with electron beams; maintain unique resources and facilities for scientific research for the both the Argonne and national scientific community; and develop and expand the frontiers of microanalysis by fostering the evolution of synergistic state-of-the-art resources in instrumentation, techniques, and scientific expertise. Register as a user / Proposal Gateway »

The Transportation Research and Analysis Computing Center (TRACC), established by the Department of Transportation in cooperation with Argonne National Laboratory, is a high-performance computing and engineering analysis research facility. TRACC provides the transportation research and development community with a state-of-the-art massively parallel computer system, advanced scientific visualization capability, high-speed network connectivity and modern engineering analysis software. Register as a user »

Didn't find what you were looking for?

Argonne has many additional laboratories and research facilities that are open to outside researchers from industry, academia and other national laboratories.