NECAT Beamline

The Northeastern Collaborative Access Team (NE-CAT) facility at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory is managed by Cornell University and consists of seven member institutions:

  • Columbia University
  • Cornell University
  • Harvard University
  • Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Rockefeller University
  • Yale University.

    • Primary funding for this project comes from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Additional financial support for NE-CAT comes from the member institutions.

     

    NE-CAT's executive committee member Thomas Steitz shares 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry!

    Employment Opportunities Posted!

    Summer 2009 “NE-CAT Communications” newsletter now available!

    Now you can view beamtime availability in a calendar format!

    GENERAL USER TIME

    General User requests for 2010-1 are now closed.

    General Users interested in beamtime for the upcoming 2010-2 run cycle should submit their requests to APS prior to the March 10th deadline.

    Both of NE-CAT's ID beamlines 24-ID-E and 24-ID-C are now equipped with MD-2 Microdiffractometers. They are operational and accepting General User proposals for 2010-2.

    Users who have missed the October 30th deadline for 2010-1 proposal submissions can apply to APS for rapid access time to NE-CAT beamlines based on open availability of unscheduled time.

    Please see our General User Requirements.

    Overview

    The Northeastern Collaborative Access Team (NE- CAT) is funded by its member institutions and the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) to operate synchrotron X-ray beamlines to address technically challenging problems in structural biology for its institutional members as well as provide an important research resource for the national community of researchers. 50% of the available beam time is provided to the national community of users. These beamlines have been developed using the extremely high-brilliance x-ray sources provided by the novel dual-canted undulators of the Advanced Photon Source ( APS) at the Argonne National Laboratory. The optical trains for NE- CAT’s two canted-undulator beamlines and its bending magnet beamline are schematically shown below.

     

    Both undulator beamlines, 24-ID-C and 24-ID-E, are in full operation providing exceptionally stable well collimated X-ray beams and are optimized for microdiffraction crystallographic research. The 24-ID-C beamline is a variable-energy beamline providing x-rays from 6.5 to 20 keV. The 24-ID-E beamline is a fixed–energy microdiffraction beamline providing x-rays at 12.66 and 14.78 keV. Installation of 24-BM-B, a bending magnet beamline, is in progress and expected to be completed in 2010. This latter project consists of moving NE- CAT's existing bending magnet beamline from Sector 8 to Sector 24 and upgrading many of its existing optical components and instrumentation. Detailed descriptions of the beamlines can be found under “Facilities”.

    The user end stations for all the beamlines are fully equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation for its users. Both undulator beamlines are equipped with MD2 microdiffractometers which provide exceptionally well collimated beams from 5 microns to 100 microns in diameter and have sample visualization systems capable of visualizing micron-sized crystals. Data is taken with very large-area CCD-based ADSC Quantum 315 detectors connected to a data storage system currently with a capacity of 39TB. The data acquisition systems have been designed for very fast data acquisition, capable of taking exposures as short as 250 msec, with a dead time of 2 sec for un-binned images and 1 sec for binned images. An Advanced Light Source (ALS)-type robotic sample auto-mount system is available on the 24-ID-C beamline to automatically mount and dismount crystals on the goniometer. Introduction of this robotic system makes screening of large numbers of crystals much faster and less effort intensive. An identical sample placement robotic system will be installed on the 24-ID-E beamline in 2009. Users of the beamlines are supported by experienced resident crystallographers and have access to a full suite of on-line and off-line data processing software to analyze their data and solve macromolecular structures. A fully equipped chemistry laboratory is also available for users. Shown below are photographs of the two undulator-based user endstations.

     

    24-ID-C Variable Energy X-ray beamline User Endstation

    24-ID-E Fixed-Energy Microdiffraction X-ray beamline User Endstation

     

     

     
     

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