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.

     

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    GENERAL USER TIME

    General User requests for 2008-2 are now closed.

    General Users interested in beamtime for the upcoming 2008-3 run cycle should submit their requests to APS prior to the July 11th deadline.

    NE-CAT's second ID beamline 24-ID-E equipped with a MD-2 Microdiffractometer is operational and accepting General User proposals for 2008-3.

    Please see our General User Requirements.

     

    Overview

    The Northeastern Collaborative Access Team ( NE- CAT) has been established to design, construct and 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. These beamlines are being 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 for research. The 24-ID-C beamline is a variable-energy beamline providing X-rays from 6.5 to 14.5 KeV, with beam spots nominally as small as 20 (vertical) by 60 (horizontal) microns. The 24-ID-E beamline is a fixed –energy microdiffraction beamline providing X-rays at 12.66 and 14.78 KeV. The 24-ID-E beamline is equipped with a MD2 microdiffractometer which is used to provide exceptionally well collimated beams from 5 microns to 100 microns in diameter and has a sample visualization system capable of visualizing micron-sized crystals. Installation of 24-BM-B, a bending magnet beamline, is now in progress and expected to be completed by mid 2008. 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 endstations for all the beamlines are fully equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation for its users. Data is taken with very large-area CCD-based ADSC Quantum 315 detectors connected to a data storage system currently with a capacity of 30TB (expandable to 75TB). 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. 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 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

     

    New capabilities are continually being added to the beamlines. We plan to add a second MD2 microdiffractometer to the 24-ID-C beamline late in 2008. Early in 2008, an Advanced Light Source (ALS)-type robotic sample auto-mount system (previously used at 8-BM) will be installed on the 24-ID-C beamline to automatically mount and dismount crystals on the goniometer. Introduction of this robotic system will make screening of large numbers of crystals much faster and less effort intensive. Late in 2008 we plan to install on the 24-ID-E beamline a new generation sample placement robotic system, being developed collaboratively with ALS staff at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

     
     

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