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Beamtime Requests vs. Proposals

A beamtime REQUEST is usually made by a NIST staff member, or a collaborator, or a PRT* member, to ask for days from the allocation of instrument time reserved for in-house and PRT programmatic research.

Normally, a user should submit a PROPOSAL rather than a REQUEST.

Some instruments are available only through REQUESTS. These include the BT4 filter-analyzer spectrometer, the BT4 triple-axis spectrometer, the SPINS triple-axis spectrometer, the NG7 horizontal-sample reflectometer, the NGD polarized beam reflectometer, and the BT8 residual-stress diffractometer. Non-NIST and non-PRT scientists interested in using these instruments should contact a NIST staff member to see if collaborative research can be arranged.

uSANS is no longer accepting proposals except as complementary to a SANS proposal. Please contact an instrument scientist to inquire about access to uSANS.


*A PRT (Participating Research Team) is a consortium of institutions which has built and continues to operate some particular instrument at the NCNR. 

Created May 12, 2017, Updated October 5, 2020