General information
Offline Microscopy Labs at MAX IV embrace three different microscopy platforms to help the MAX IV users, industry or academia partners to support their measurements with high-quality microscopy / microspectroscopy data, or to run standalone experiments.
- Ultra-High Vacuum Scanning Tunneling Microscope and the vacuum suitcase
- Infrared Spectromicroscopy Platform (MJOLNIR)
- Scanning Electron Microscope (+ elemental analysis)
The above table and menu to the left will guide you to the detailed description of the machine(s) and provide with information on how to get access to the particular machine, what are the specifications of the machine, and whether there are specific sample requirements. General access guidelines you find below.
Access
The access to the infrastructure is granted to MAX IV users, industry partners and academics based on research merit(s) of their proposals submitted through the Digital User Office system at MAX IV (DUO). The call for proposals is open all year round (TBA) and simplified access procedure, so called Fast Access applies. There are two types of experiments that can be applied for:
- Scientific Experiment (SE)
Short, time-critical experiments which cannot wait until the next call for proposals. - Sample Feasibility (SF)
Preliminary experiments conducted to evaluate technical feasibility or validate sample preparation, primarily serving as a preliminary study for a Standard Access proposal.
When planning your measurements at MAX IV Microscopy Labs, please, have in mind that the machines are booked at “first come – first served” basis, so the earlier you apply for the measurement time – the better. As an indication (but no guarantee!), the tunneling microscope/vacuum suitcase are generally not oversubscribed, but could be booked back-to-back for a few weeks in a row. The scanning electron microscope is relatively easily available, but if you require operator’s help with SEM, please contact the instrument scientist. The infrared platform, MJOLNIR, is both heavily booked and oversubscribed.
Submitting a Fast Access proposal practicalities
Requests for the lab access are reviewed and assessed on the “first come – first served” basis, so please consider submitting a FA proposal as soon as your beamtime proposal has been granted with time, OR irrespectively of that if you need to use our lab premises.
In your DUO account, at Step 1: “General part” please choose the following options
- Proposal type: “Fast Access”
- MAX IV Research Area: “Offline Microscopy”
- FORD: (at your discretion)
- Requested beamline: AFM-IR
as in the image below
Then, in Step 3, make sure to click/select the appropriate beamline and experimental station aka equipment (example below is for booking AFM-IR with laser, use appropriate options for STM and oPTIR, respectively!)
Safety concerns
When filling in the radiation-, bio- and chemical saftey questionnaire for your sample(s), a risk associated with your sample, preparation, measurement or sample disposal might be discovered.
In this case, you will be asked to fill in an ESRA – Experimental Safety Risk Assessment form. If you have already filled an ESRA form for your experiment at a beamline, which has been assessed and approved, then just refer to it in your fast Access proposal. If you haven’t done that yet, please, do it as soon as possible, becasue the Experimental Safety Team might be busy with their tasks at beamlines and won’t have time to assess the risks and greenlight your experiment if ESRA is not submitted in a good time.
ESRA must be filled in online and can be found at DOMNI portal. Please, also mind that due to changes in IT security policies, you now need to have a two-factor autentification (2FA) to log in to the DOMNI portal which handles the ESRA form. More information on downloading the OTP client needed for authentication can be found in the respective page here.
Pricing
We plan to maintain STM and SEM services free of charge for MAX IV users. The access to MJOLNIR platform is free at the moment, however, a small fee is going to be introduced from Spring or Fall’26 run for partial coverage of consumables and machine resource. More information to follow, and we shall issue a notice to our users when the fee will be introduced.
User input
We gratefully appreciate your input through answering this short questionnaire as it will allow us to gauge the user interest to the microscopy infrastructure at MAX IV, and to provide a ground for expanding the park of available techniques or for developing more directions. Thank you very much!