Call for proposals for access to integrated multidisciplinary facilities for Materials and Biomaterials

CERIC-ERIC offers access through a single entry point to more than 60 different and complementary state of the art techniques and support laboratories, distributed in 11 countries, with the submission of single or multi-technique proposals. A detailed description of the facilities available in CERIC can be found here.

Access to CERIC is open to scientists from all over the world and free of charge, provided the results end data are made available to the community in a reasonable time, according to our Scientific Data Policy.

Deadlines

• March 3rd 2026 at 17:00 CET to have a pre-evaluation and the possibility to improve your proposal
• March 31st 2026 at 17:00 CEST final submission, recommended only for users that are expert in all the techniques requested.

How to apply

Proposals should be submitted online through the Virtual Unified Office (VUO), more information here. The best projects will be selected through international peer review.

Partial support for user’s mobility will be available for a maximum of two users through funding provided by CERIC. Read the policy here.

Upgrades & Maintenance

Elettra 2.0
Starting from July 2nd, 2025 the removal of Elettra and the installation of the new Elettra 2.0 machine has begun at the CERIC Italian Parnter Facility. The new source will exhibit a major increase in the brilliance and coherence fraction of the photon beams. The Elettra 2.0 optics is based on our enhanced symmetric six bend achromat structure (S6BA-E) with a 12-fold symmetry and an emittance of 200 pm-rad at 2.4 GeV. The new structure creates also straight sections in the arcs permitting the installation of additional insertion devices, thus increasing the number of beamlines. Existing beamlines are being upgraded and new beamlines will be installed to take full advantage of the characteristics of Elettra 2.0. The new machine is scheduled for commissioning in the second half of 2026.
Hence, in the current call for proposals access will not be offered to the beamlines located at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste, including the Austrian SAXS beamline.

Three offline beamlines will instead keep offering access:

• Inelastic Ultraviolet Scattering Offline laboratory (IUVS-Offline)
• Offline Synchrotron Infrared Source for Spectroscopy and Imaging – Chemistry & Life Science  (SISSI-Bio OFF-line)
• Czech Materials Science Beamline (MSB) at Elettra offers offline photoemission experiments with a dual-anode (Mg/Al) X-ray lamp as photon source. Most of the end-station facilities described on the website https://www.elettra.eu/lightsources/elettra/elettra-beamlines/msb/manuals.html remain available, please contact the local staff before submission.

Ruđer Bošković Institute
The ion beam Croatian facilty at the Ruđer Bošković Institute is undergoing a major upgrade to the accellarator bulding and is expected to be fully operational by the end of the year. Accepted proposals will therefore be performed at the earliest starting from the end of 2026.

CERIC continues to offer access to the following facilities:

• Microfrabrication Laboratory of TU Graz at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste
• 600 MHz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer (Bond) for solid-state research at the Slovenian NMR Centre in Ljubljana

Two-steps application

The first step allows a pre-evaluation of the proposal at the facilities, followed by two weeks for editing before final submission at the second deadline. Although we suggest taking advantage of the pre-evaluation, expert users may decide to submit their proposals directly at the second deadline.

Fast track access

Read the CERIC Scientific Data Policy here

CERIC user office: useroffice@ceric-eric.eu