The Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) is a multi-disciplinary research institute for natural and engineering sciences in Switzerland. It is located in the Canton of Aargau in the municipalities Villigen and Würenlingen on either side of the River Aare, and covers an area over 35 hectares in size.PSI-magazine 5232, issue 3/2018, p. 39 Like ETH Zurich and EPFL, PSI belongs to the ETH Domain of the Swiss Confederation. PSI employs around 3000 people. It conducts basic and applied research in the fields of matter and materials, human health, and energy and the environment. About 37% of PSI's research activities focus on material sciences, 24% on life sciences, 19% on general energy, 11% on nuclear energy and safety, and 9% on particle physics.
PSI develops, builds and operates large and complex research facilities and makes them available to the national and international scientific communities. In 2017, for example, more than 2,500 researchers from 60 different countries came to PSI to take advantage of the concentration of large-scale research facilities in the same location, which is unique worldwide. About 1,900 experiments are conducted each year at the approximately 40 measuring stations in these facilities.
In recent years, the institute has been one of the largest recipients of money from the Swiss lottery fund.
History The institute, named after the Swiss physicist Paul Scherrer, was created in 1988 when EIR (Eidgenössisches Institut für Reaktorforschung, Swiss Federal Institute for Reactor Research, founded in 1960) was merged with SIN (Schweizerisches Institut für Nuklearphysik, Swiss Institute for Nuclear Research, founded in 1968). The two institutes on opposite sides of the River Aare served as national centres for research: one focusing on nuclear energy and the other on nuclear and particle physics. Over the years, research at the centres expanded into other areas, and nuclear and reactor physics accounts for just 11 percent of the research work at PSI today. Since Switzerland decided in 2011 to phase out nuclear energy, this research has primarily been concerned with questions of safety, such as how to store radioactive waste safely in a deep geological repository.
Since 1984, PSI has operated (initially as SIN) the centre for Proton Therapy for treating patients with eye melanomas and other tumours located deep inside the body. More than 9,000 patients have been treated there until now (status 2020).
The institute is also active in space research. For example, in 1990 PSI engineers built the detector of the EUVITA telescope for the Russian satellite Spectrum X-G, and later also supplied NASA and ESA with detectors to analyse radiation in space. In 1992, physicists used accelerator mass spectrometry and radiocarbon methods to determine the age of Ötzi, the mummy found in a glacier in the Ötztal Alps a year earlier, from small samples of just a few milligrams of bone, tissue and grass.Bonani, G. et al.: Altersbestimmung von Milligrammproben der Ötztaler Gletscherleiche mit der Beschleunigermassenspektrometrie-Methode (AMS). Report of the 1992 International Symposium in Innsbruck. In: Universität Innsbruck (publisher): Publications of the University of Innsbruck. Der Mann im Eis. 187. Innsbruck 1992, p. 108–116 They were analysed at the TANDEM accelerator on the Hönggerberg near Zurich, which at the time was jointly operated by ETH Zurich and PSI.
In 2009, the Indian-born British structural biologist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for, among other things, his research at the Synchrotron Light Source Switzerland (SLS). The SLS is one of PSI's four large-scale research facilities. His investigations there enabled Ramakrishnan to clarify what ribosomes look like and how they function at the level of individual molecules. Using the information encoded in the genes, ribosomes produce proteins that control many chemical processes in living organisms.
In 2010, an international team of researchers at PSI used negative muons to perform a new measurement of the proton and found that its radius is significantly smaller than previously thought: 0.84184 femtometers instead of 0.8768. According to press reports, this result was not only surprising, it could also call previous models in physics into question. The measurements were only possible with PSI's 590 MeV proton accelerator HIPA because its secondarily generated muon beam is the only one worldwide that is intense enough to conduct the experiment.
In 2011, researchers from PSI and elsewhere succeeded in deciphering the basic structure of the protein molecule rhodopsin with the help of the SLS. This optical pigment acts as a kind of light sensor and plays a decisive role in the process of sight.
A so-called ‘barrel pixel detector’ built at PSI was a central element in the CMS detector at the Geneva nuclear research centre CERN, and was thus involved in detecting the Higgs boson. This discovery, announced on 4 July 2012, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics one year later.
In January 2016, 20 kilograms of plutonium were taken from PSI to the USA. According to a newspaper report, the federal government had a secret plutonium storage facility in which the material had been kept since the 1960s to construct an atomic bomb as planned at the time. The Federal Council denied this, maintaining the plutonium-239 content of the material was below 92 percent, which meant it was not weapons-grade material. The idea was rather to use the material obtained from reprocessed fuel rods of the Diorit research reactor, which was operated from 1960 to 1977, to develop a new generation of fuel element types for nuclear power plants. This, however, never happened. By the time it was decided, in 2011, to phase out nuclear power, it had become clear that there was no further use for the material in Switzerland. The Federal Council decided at the Nuclear Security Summit in 2014 to close the Swiss plutonium storage facility. A bilateral agreement between the two countries meant the plutonium could then be transferred to the US for further storage.
The removal of plutonium from PSI was praised by the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration as a contribution to global non-proliferation efforts. Switzerland was recognized as eliminating all separated plutonium from its territory ahead of the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit, in cooperation with U.S., U.K., and IAEA authorities.
+ PSI-Directors Term Director 1988–1990 Jean-Pierre Blaser 1990–1991 Anton Menth 1991–1992 Wilfred Hirt (Interim) 1992–2002 Meinrad Eberle 2002–2007 Ralph Eichler 2007–2008 Martin Jermann (Interim) 2008–2018 Joël Mesot 2019–2020 Thierry Strässle (Interim) Since 1 April 2020 Christian Rüegg
In July 2017, the three-dimensional alignment of magnetization inside a three-dimensional magnetic object was investigated and visualized with the help of the SLS without affecting the material. The technology is expected to be useful in developing better magnets, for example for motors or data storage.
Joël François Mesot, the long-standing Director of PSI (2008 to 2018), was elected President of ETH Zurich at the end of 2018. His post was temporarily taken over by the physicist and PSI Chief of Staff Thierry Strässle from January 2019. Since 1 April 2020, the physicist Christian Rüegg has been Director of PSI. He was previously head of the PSI research division Neutrons and Muons.
Numerous PSI spin-off companies have been founded over the years to make the research findings available to the wider society. The largest spin-off, with 120 employees, is the DECTRIS AG, founded in 2006 in nearby Baden, which specializes in the development and marketing of X-ray detectors. SwissNeutronics AG in Klingnau, which sells optical components for neutron research facilities, was founded as early as 1999. Several recent PSI offshoots, such as the manufacturer of metal-organic frameworks novoMOF or the drug developer leadXpro, have settled close to PSI in the Park Innovaare, which was founded in 2015 with the support of several companies and Canton Aargau.PSI-Magazine 5232, issue 3/2018, p. 8–20
In 2024, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the PSI signed an agreement to establish the European Space Deep-Tech Innovation Centre (ESDI) near the PSI campus in northern Switzerland. The centre, formally part of ESA, includes a research platform called Phi-Lab, which is integrated into PSI and supports innovation initiatives. PSI has a long-standing relationship with ESA, including the development of the RADEM radiation detector for the JUICE mission to Jupiter, launched in 2023.
Research areas and departments PSI develops, builds and operates several accelerator facilities, e. g. a 590 MeV high-current cyclotron, which in normal operation supplies a beam current of about 2.2 mA. PSI also operates four large-scale research facilities: a synchrotron light source (SLS), which is particularly brilliant and stable, a spallation neutron source (SINQ), a muon source (SμS) and an X-ray free-electron laser (SwissFEL). This makes PSI currently (2020) the only institute in the world to provide the four most important probes for researching the structure and dynamics of condensed matter (neutrons, muons and synchrotron radiation) on a campus for the international user community. In addition, HIPA's target facilities also produce pions that feed the muon source and the Ultracold Neutron source UCN produces very slow, ultracold neutrons. All these particle types are used for research in particle physics.
Research at PSI is conducted with the help of these facilities. Its focus areas include:
Matter and Material All the materials humans work with are made up of atoms. The interaction of atoms and their arrangement determine the properties of a material. Most of the researchers in the field of matter and materials at PSI want to find out more about how the internal structure of different materials relates to their observable properties. Fundamental research in this area contributes to the development of new materials with a wide range of applications, for example in electrical engineering, medicine, telecommunications, mobility, new energy storage systems, quantum computers and spintronics. The phenomena investigated include superconductivity, ferro- and antiferromagnetism, spin fluids and topological insulators.
Neutrons are intensively used for materials research at PSI because they enable unique and non-destructive access to the interior of materials on a scale ranging from the size of atoms to objects a centimetre long. They therefore serve as ideal probes for investigating fundamental and applied research topics, such as quantum spin systems and their potential for application in future computer technologies, the functionalities of complex lipid membranes and their use for the transport and targeted release of drug substances, as well as the structure of novel materials for energy storage as key components in intelligent energy networks.