A Brief History of PNC

Founded by Ed Stern (University of Washington), Daryl Crozier (Simon Fraser University), Mike Knotek and Ray Stults (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) with the goal of providing a hard X-ray facility for spectroscopy and microbeam research.

With changes in DOE operations funding policy in 2003, the American component became supported through the Advanced Photon Source, with the Canadian component (the PNCSRF) continuing to be funded by the MFA/MRS programmes of NSERC of Canada, and access to the APS provided under a partnership arrangement (PUP).

In 2012, Prof. Crozier, also a member of the CLSI Board of Directors, decided to retire as director of PNC. After discussions with Prof. Crozier, Josef Hormes (Executive Director of the CLS) and Emil Hallin (CLS) agreed that Canadians could continue to benefit from this dedicated access to the APS under CLS leadership. The APS welcomed this development, and the Partnership was approved to expand beyond sector 20.

With the renewal of the partnership arrangement between the CLS and the APS in 2015, the PNCSRF designation was retired and the Canadian participation renamed CLS@APS.

A note from PNC-CAT Founding Director Edward Stern (Univeristy of Washington):

Welcome to the Pacific Northwest Consortium Collaborative Access Team!

The PNC-CAT was founded in 1990 as a collaboration between Pacific Northwest American and Western Canadian institutions to design, construct and operate undulator and bending magnet beamlines at sector 20 of the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory. The principal collaborative partners in this endeavor were the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington State, Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia and The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.

Our beamlines were designed primarily for energy variable applications of focused and unfocused X-rays in the energy range 2.5 - 40 keV in the fields of Physics, Chemistry and Materials as well as Environmental and Geological Sciences. Our capabilities in these areas are further described in the Beamlines and Research portions of this website. New developments and improvements to our facility are always in mind, and suggestions or questions welcome.

We have been operational and accepting General Users since 2001. Since 2003, with changes in operations funding by the Department of Energy, we are now partnered with the X-ray Science Division of the Advanced Photon Source, but our primary goal remains unchanged: to provide a world-class facility for scientists to conduct their X-ray research. Should you wish to conduct experiments at the PNC-CAT, I encourage you to apply for beamtime. If you have questions about your experiments at PNC, our staff scientists are always interested in novel research challenges and are quite willing to assist new Users.

Again, welcome to the PNC-CAT and I hope your time here is as productive as we can make it!

Best regards,

Edward A. Stern,

Founding Director, PNC-CAT