The Center for Advanced Radiation Sources (CARS)
Executive Director's introduction, P. James Viccaro | Faculty Research Summaries
CARS: A Collaborative Access Team at the APS
The Advanced Photon Source (APS), a spectrally brilliant synchrotron radiation X-ray source research facility, has been built and is operating at Argonne National Laboratory (see http://www.aps.anl.gov). To enable University of Chicago scientists and their national colleagues to take full advantage of the APS, The University of Chicago took the lead in 1989 in establishing a Collaborative Access Team (CAT) of scientists with a common interest in using the APS. This CAT is managed by the University of Chicago Center for Advanced Radiation Sources, CARS.
The CAT is made up of a Consortium which has five institutional members and four national user groups. The institutional members are: The University of Chicago (CARS Managing Agent), The University of Illinois at Chicago, Northern Illinois University, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) on behalf of the Australian Synchrotron Research Program; the four user groups are in structural biology (BioCARS), chemistry and materials science (ChemMatCARS), geophysical sciences (GeoCARS), and soil/environmental sciences (SoilEnviroCARS). For the purposes of operation, the last two user groups are united into GeoSoilEnviroCARS.
The goal of CARS is to provide and support forefront high brilliance X-ray beam lines at the APS and to make them available to the faculty and staff of its member universities and to its user groups for frontier research. CARS-CAT beam lines are available to the community at large as national facilities for a majority of the time. Our single essential priority is to facilitate the conduct of cutting edge basic scientific research that exploits the unique characteristics of the APS as an X-ray source to the fullest extent.
Scientific Programs of CARS
On the basis of peer-reviewed proposals, three sectors, consisting of an insertion device and a bending magnet x-ray source, were awarded to CARS-CAT, assigned mainly to BioCARS (Sector 14), GeoSoilEnviroCARS (Sector 13) and ChemMatCARS (Sector 15). The initial construction phase of all three sectors is complete. Both insertion device and bending magnet beamlines are operational on Sectors 13 and 14. Currently, scientific experiments on ChemMatCARS are designed to exploit the unique features of the undulator insertion device source. and the scientific case is being developed to support the final buildout of the bending magnet source.
CARS facilities reflect our belief that the best science will in fact be carried out in an inter-disciplinary mode and that the substantial design and technological problems each discipline faces are best attacked in a central, cooperative manner. A very large variety of experimental techniques have been developed as part of the CARS facilities and are available to users. For detail see the CARS web site http://cars.uchicago.edu.
In GeoSoilEnviroCARS, research furthers knowledge of the composition, structure and properties of earth and planetary materials and the processes they control. Experiments are aimed at high-pressure research using both the diamond anvil cell and the large volume press; X-ray diffraction and scattering, and X-ray absorption spectroscopy, from earth and planetary materials; and X-ray fluorescence microprobe analysis and microtomography.
In ChemMatCARS, research focuses on dynamic and static aspects of condensed matter in chemistry and materials research. Areas include surface and interfacial properties in soft condensed matter and molecular liquids; chemical crystallography; and interfacial and bulk properties of novel polymers and composites, including supramolecular and nanoscale structures.
In BioCARS, experiments involve crystallographic studies of viruses, ribosomes and other complexes with very large unit cells; studies of microcrystals; time-resolved crystallography; and (to a lesser extent) scattering from less-ordered biological systems. In all cases, the goal is to understand basic biological processes in structural terms, a goal fundamental to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries as well as to basic biomedical science.
These scientific studies are complemented by research by CARS staff which focuses on the development of forefront technical infrastructure as well as cutting edge scientific projects which push the envelope of the facility.
In addition to the Consortium facilities at the APS, the Center for Advanced Radiation Sources also manages the operations of the Industrial Macromolecular Crystallography Association (IMCA)-CAT on Sector 17. CARS became responsible for the operations of IMCA-CAT as the result of an agreement that began January 1, 2005 , between the University of Chicago and the IMCA Supervisory Board that represents the nine pharmaceutical industries that are members of IMCA and perform proprietary experiments on Sector 17. Non-proprietary research is also performed on Sector 17 by industrial users and other users who have received beamtime as a result of a peer-reviewed proposal process.
P. James Viccaro, Executive Director