By Paul Menser, Idaho National Laboratory Communications 

The Research Collaboration Building at Idaho National Laboratory's Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) now offers remote operating system capabilities. This enhancement provides researchers with easier access to select instruments within the Irradiated Materials Characterization Laboratory (IMCL), a key resource for high-demand instruments such as the plasma focused ion beam and transmission electron microscopes. 

The Research Collaboration Building serves as a landing spot, collaborative working space, and training area for a growing number of students, visiting researchers and postdoctoral researchers engaged in work at MFC. 

Completed in 2019, the building features 28 offices for researchers, staff members and long-term visitors. It contains 23 workstations and five collaboration spaces where scientists can host research partners and analyze data together. The inclusion of remote consoles enables after-hours access to IMCL's advanced microscopes, offering scheduling flexibility and significantly increasing the available hours on the instruments in IMCL. 

Grace Burke, a world-leading researcher in advanced microstructural characterization and irradiation embrittlement, expressed the tremendous advantage of remote microscope use for research and teaching purposes. Burke, who became a Laboratory Fellow in March, had her first experience with remote operation at INL and spoke highly of the capability. She leads INL's research on reactor structural materials and actively promotes education in electron microscopy and nuclear materials research.  

Burke emphasized the benefits of remote capabilities. "Microscope rooms can be on the small side, making it difficult to have additional people in the room when you would like to demonstrate specific techniques or share tips on optimizing analytical conditions,” she said. With this capability, “it's possible to actually take control of the microscope, and if a colleague is involved with the research, you can share the session, maximizing efficiency as well as providing guidance on technique optimization. If you're performing a very long data acquisition experiment, this allows you to multitask and work on other things while keeping an eye on the specimen." 

The IMCL remote console allows researchers to operate the IMCL remotely, improving utilization, reducing operations costs and increasing overall access. 

According to Colin Judge, division director of Characterization and Post-Irradiation Examination, the purpose of remote access is to improve instrument utilization, reduce operation costs and provide increased access for after-hours and weekend work. It enhances data security, resiliency and access to high-performance computing resources. Because the capability exists outside MFC's secured perimeter, it eliminates the need for researchers to undergo training and protocols required for an actual visit to IMCL. With reduced risk of contamination and minimized training requirements since physical access to IMCL is not necessary, remote capabilities especially benefit radiological workers and researchers. 

The development of these capabilities received support from MFC's management team. It was a collaborative effort among Advanced Characterization, IMCL Facility Operations and the Computer Engineering departments. The Nuclear Science User Facilities has been supporting the construction of the Research Collaboration Building since FY-18 and recently provided funding to acquire software to enable remote access to the Transmission Electron Microscope in IMCL. 

According to Tiankai Yao, group lead for INL Materials Characterization and Informatics, this achievement and data centralization led by Fei Xu represents Phase One of the project. Phase Two aims to extend remote accessibility of the microscopes to researchers at INL's Research and Education Campus in Idaho Falls. Yao explained that this expansion would involve collaboration with the MFC computer engineering department and lab's information management experts to ensure safe data distribution. 

The integration of remote operating system capabilities within the RCB stands as a transformative milestone in advancing research accessibility and collaboration. This was achieved through collaborative efforts across various departments and marks the successful completion of Phase One of this initiative. This ongoing project demonstrates a commitment to innovation, heralding a future of enhanced research methodologies and broader collaboration in the scientific community.