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ESRF’s popularity reaches a record high

30-03-2016

Beamtime is heavily in demand for another year running at the ESRF, with a record number of requests received for experiments to be scheduled from August 2016 to February 2017.

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1245 proposals were submitted for the March 1st proposal deadline, making a new all-time record.

In terms of beamtime, this figure represents a total of nearly 18 000 shifts.

This record in popularity is a clear sign of the ever increasing interest and enthusiasm of the user community to obtain beamtime and use the upgraded facilities on offer at the ESRF.

User interest was already very high in 2015 for the first proposal round for experiments to be scheduled in 2016. With the latest surge of demands, the overall number of proposals submitted requesting beamtime in 2016 is 2380, representing a 16% increase over the best yearly pre-upgrade programme total.

In 2008, the ESRF launched a major upgrade of the facility and completed the first phase of the programme in 2015. As a result, the ESRF benefits from 19 new generation experimental stations to explore the nanoworld, as well as greatly enhanced site logistics and user reception facilities.

Following on from this success, the ESRF is pursuing the upgrade with the project ESRF-EBS: the Extremely Brilliant Source. The major technological challenge of this project is to build a new and first-of-a-kind storage ring with performances multiplied by 100 in terms of brilliance and coherence. This new source of synchrotron radiation will offer unprecedented tools for the exploration of matter and for the understanding of life at the macromolecular level.

The ESRF-EBS project also includes the construction of new state-of-the-art beamlines, an ambitious scientific instrumentation programme including high-performance detectors and a "data as a service" strategy.

Find out more about applying for beamtime at the ESRF.

Learn more about the ESRF-EBS project.

Top image: Never has the ESRF been so popular as requests for beamtime hit a record high in March. Credit: D. McBride.