As a national user facility the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource invites scientists from all over the world to use our intense X-ray beam and world-class instruments for their experiments.

SSRL Celebrates 50 Years!

Crystallography Confirms De Novo Protein Binding Modes and Hotspots

Structural Evidence that Rodents Facilitated the Evolution of the SARS-COV-2 Omicron Variant

Nanoglues for Robust Atomically Dispersed Catalysts

How Epstein-Barr Virus Infection Triggers Multiple Sclerosis

Shedding new light on the study on high-Tc cuprates

SSRL Operations Update

An electrical incident occurred on the SLAC site in late December. A site-wide safety stand down ensued to review and improve operating procedures across the site - with particular emphasis on hazardous energy (CoHE) protocols and lock-out-tag-out (LOTO) restrictions. These restrictions applied to restarting the injector and SPEAR3 for SSRL operations. The situation was further compounded by a SPEAR3 injector transformer failure on January 11. New procedures had to be approved by the Department of Energy before any CoHE or LOTO work could be done. Work on the transformer has begun, and we we hope to be able to restart SSRL operations in early July. We realize that this unexpected outage has had significant impact on our user community, and we sincerely appreciate your patience.

Supporting the User Community

Visiting scientists ("users") from universities, industries and laboratories around the world use SSRL experimental facilities to conduct experiments across a broad range of scientific, engineering, and environmental disciplines.

Our Experimental Facilities

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Users conduct experiments at SSRL's approximately 30 experimental stations, which utilize extremely bright x-rays produced by the SPEAR3 storage ring. SSRL provides access to beam lines, instrumentation, ancillary equipment supported by dedicated staff scientists and technicians.

Science at SSRL

SSRL's extremely bright x-rays are used by scientists to view the nanoworld, leading to cutting-edge research in drug discovery, energy efficiency and supply, environmental remediation (toxic waste cleanup), electronics, telecommunications and manufacturing.