Argonne Celebrates Successful Completion Of The Advanced Photon Source Upgrade

The U.S. Department of Energy has granted its final approval to the project, bringing the decade-plus-long effort to a close

The upgraded APS is now the brightest synchrotron X-ray light source in the world, and extraordinary new scientific experiments are underway.

The comprehensive upgrade of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) is officially completed.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has given its final approval to the APS Upgrade Project, an $815M effort to transform the APS into the brightest synchrotron X-ray facility in the world. The effort has taken more than a decade to plan and complete and has resulted in a facility with unprecedented capabilities for scientific discovery. The APS is a DOE Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory.

The upgraded APS now generates X-ray beams that are up to 500 times brighter than before and sports nine new experiment stations (called beamlines) built to take full advantage of those enhanced beams. Scientists have been using the revamped facility for more than a year, exploring its new capabilities for research into more durable materials (for airplane turbines and other high-stress uses), longer-lasting batteries (for laptops and cell phones) and microelectronics (for our device-driven modern lives).

“The APS Upgrade has been an extraordinary endeavor, and it was only possible thanks to the dedication and hard work of the entire team past and present, a collective drive for cutting edge innovation, and continuous support and trust of our sponsors at DOE.” – Laurent Chapon, Argonne National Laboratory.

“The upgraded APS is a keystone for the future of science at Argonne,” said Laboratory Director Paul Kearns. ​“With its upgrade project complete, the APS will continue to lead the way in coherent X-ray science in our country and around the world. We are excited to see it continue to empower breakthroughs that improve all our lives.”

The first step toward final approval, known as Critical Decision 4, was granted following a two-day DOE review in late September 2025 during which project leaders walked reviewers through the full scope of the project. At the center of the upgrade was a complete replacement of the original electron storage ring installed 30 years ago. The new one is made up of 1,321 powerful and mixed-function electromagnets, a more compact vacuum system and miles of cables connecting dozens of power supply and control units. Removing the original ring and installing the new one required a year-long pause in APS operations, beginning in April 2023.

The creation of nine new beamlines, along with enhancements of a further 15 and alignment of all 72 research stations around the ring, was similarly complex. The new beamlines required new custom-made optics such as lenses and mirrors, powerful new detectors and other components to enable new X-ray techniques that were previously inaccessible. Two of these beamlines were built a considerable distance away from the storage ring (to enable tremendous focusing abilities), requiring the construction of the Long Beamline Building to house them.

All told, the APS Upgrade involved the design, fabrication, installation, testing and commissioning of hundreds of components. The upgrade team consisted of hundreds of employees and contractors, all working to ensure that the project was completed safely, ahead of schedule and on budget, and delivering the scientific capabilities originally imagined.

“The APS Upgrade has been an extraordinary endeavor, and it was only possible thanks to the dedication and hard work of the entire team past and present, a collective drive for cutting edge innovation and the continuous support and trust of our sponsors at DOE,” said Laurent Chapon, Argonne associate laboratory director for Photon Sciences and director of the APS Upgrade Project. ​“This final approval is a moment for everyone involved with the project to take pride in and celebrate. It marks the beginning of a new era in synchrotron-enabled science at the APS.”

Though the APS Upgrade is now complete, the new era of scientific exploration at the APS has just begun. In a typical year, the APS welcomes more than 5,500 scientists from across the country and around the world. Data collected at the beamlines has been instrumental in countless advancements in materials science, additive manufacturing, fuel efficiency and biology, as well as three Nobel prizes in chemistry. With the upgraded facility in operation and experiments underway in all of these areas, the potential of the reinvented APS is almost limitless.

“It’s an extremely exciting time for all of us at Argonne,” Chapon said. ​“Here’s to the next 30 years of the APS.”

About The Advanced Photon Source
The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the world’s most productive X-ray light source facilities. The APS provides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nation’s economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than 5,000 researchers use the APS to produce over 2,000 publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility. APS scientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at the APS.

This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology by conducting leading-edge basic and applied research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.