Proposal submission

If you are submitting a proposal for the first time please consult our New User page.

The following instruments will be available for the forthcoming round. You will find details of the instruments here.
Instruments marked with an asterisk * in the list are CRG instruments, where a smaller amount of beamtime is available than on ILL-funded instruments, but we encourage applications for these.

• powder diffractometers: D1B*, D2B, D20, XtremeD*
• disordered materials diffractometer: D4
• polarised neutron diffractometers: D3
• single-crystal diffractometers: D9, D10, D23*
•  strain imaging diffractometer SALSA
• large scale structure diffractometers: D16, LADI, DALI
• small-angle scattering: D11, D22, D33
• reflectometers: SuperADAM*, D17, FIGARO
•  imaging instrument NeXT 
• three-axis spectrometers: IN1-LAGRANGE, IN8, IN12*, IN20, IN22*, ThALES
• time-of-flight spectrometers: IN5, SHARP
• backscattering and spin-echo spectrometers: IN13*, IN15, IN16B, WASP
• fundamental-physics instruments: FIPPS, PF1B, PF2, PN1, S18*

Please note that D11 will not be available until the second cycle in 2024, because the necessary works for the installation of the SAM instrument.  If  everything goes according to plans, it will have first neutrons in 2024 and welcome users later in that year. More information will be given in due course.

D007 is currently under construction and is planned to have its first neutrons in the first half of next year.  Following commissioning, it may be possible to perform some experiments later in 2024.  Given the uncertainties inherent in the commissioning phase, no time will be allocated in this proposal round.  However, anyone interested in performing D007 is strongly encouraged to contact the instrument scientists (https://www.ill.eu/users/instruments/instruments-list/d7/contacts) to discuss their ideas and the possibility to submit proposals through other channels once a better idea of the available time is known.

The instrument D19 will not be available to the user programme from 2024. D3, D9 and IN8 will operate for 50% of the time.

PANTHER : Because of problems with its Fermi chopper, the instrument PANTHER was not available in the last cycle in 2023 (and possibly most of the first 2024 cycle). This situation will create a considerable backlog which we need to absorb before opening the instrument to new proposals.

A very high intensity powder and single crystal diffractometer - XtremeD - is now available for user operation. It will be operated  in CRG mode, and 50% of beamtime will be offered to ILL users via the standards calls.

40 Tesla / 2K cryomagnet available on IN22: a pulsed horizontal field cryomagnet developed by LNCMI Toulouse and the ILL is available to ILL Users. Experiments with this magnet can be performed on IN22 in collaboration with LNCMI who provides and operates the power supply. If you wish to submit a proposal, please contact both Fabienne DUC (LNCMI, Toulouse) and Frédéric BOURDAROT (CEA, Grenoble) to prepare your proposal. The equipment can only be used with support from LNCMI, therefore a LNCMI person will be included in the proposal and experimental team.
Please select the environment code 'Cryomagnet, Pulsed Horizontal Field < 40 T' if you want to use this option.
More information here.

For soft matter and biology users: an extensive library of hydrogenous and deuterated lipids from natural extracts is available for neutron scattering experiments from the L-Lab at the ILL. You can find the list at http://www.ill.eu/L-Lab. If the compound you are looking for is not in the list, please contact lipids@remove-this.ill.fr.

Proposals from non-member country proposers will only be guaranteed a chance of acceptance if they are part of a collaboration with at least two-thirds of the proposers coming from one of the Associate or Scientific Member Countries of the ILL.  ILL scientists listed as co-proposers are not taken into account in the calculation.
Furthermore the ILL Director retains the right to limit the number of proposals including scientists from non-members countries.

Not satisfying this rule will not be a blocking condition for proposal submissions: proposals not fulfilling the 2/3 can still be allocated time, but then from Directors discretion time. These proposals should still be reviewed by the subcommittees and they have to be truly world class and addressing hot-topics (judged by the subcommittees and the science director).
 

All proposals will be reviewed by the subcommittees of the Scientific Council, approximately 8 weeks after the deadline for submission of applications. Beamtime allocation is on the basis of scientific merit, provided the experiment proposed meets technical feasibility and safety requirements. 
Subcommittee members are specialists in the relevant areas of each college and they evaluate the proposals for scientific merit, assigning priorities and beamtime to accepted proposals. Before meeting, the subcommittee receives a report on the technical feasibility of the experiments proposed from the appropriate college at the ILL. 
Shortly after the subcommittees meeting the main proposer will be informed if his/her research proposal has been accepted. In the case of a rejection only brief general reasons are given, as the ILL declines to enter into correspondence concerning decisions made by the scientific subcommittees.

Consumables for ILL experiments
More information can be found here.

Collection of information on the funding behind UK users
The UK is implementing a new funding model for large facilities. As part of this process, the STFC is required to be able to provide information to the other UK research councils on the users of the national and international facilities the STFC supports, including being able to link facility access proposals to the related research council grant where appropriate. To do this, STFC will have to collect a full set of data on the UK users of each facility. The full set of data is based mainly on what is already collected by the facilities (statistics on beamtime allocation, its distribution over different UK laboratories and so on), with the addition of the clear link to the source of UK funding underpinning the research in question.
To help STFC collect this information, we now ask all UK users to provide details on the source of the funding of their research (when applicable) when they submit their proposal form to the ILL. The information is "compulsory" for all UK main proposers. It is not compulsory at the submission stage for UK co-proposers, but they will be asked to provide this information prior to using the facility, e.g. at the invitation stage.

In order to demonstrate the 'innovation potential' of neutron scattering, we are particularly keen to know if your academic research is directly linked to industry.
This is most obvious if you have industry sponsorship, for example, for students or samples.
Please use the tick-box on the proposal form and give appropriate information in the text box, including if possible the name of the company you are working with. ILL would like to use this information to promote the use of neutrons by industry via academia.

We have appended new codes for the sample environment equipment available at the ILL. A wider choice of equipment is now available for experiments performed close to ambient conditions.
We would very much appreciate that you take the time to check this list and identify the codes which best match your needs.