Accelerators

9 MV FN Pelletron

The 9 MV FN Pelletron tandem accelerator was built by the High Voltage Engineering Corporation in 1973 and it was later upgraded from the original terminal voltage of 7.5 MV (FN machine) to 9 MV. The 9 MV tandem accelerator is presently used for basic research, mainly for nuclear structure physics and nuclear reaction physics. The activity at the tandem accelerator is supervised by the Program Advisory Committee, running at an average of 5500 hours per year. The original configuration of the machine was upgraded starting with 2006. The charging belt was replaced with a more reliable Pelletron system, new ion sources were installed and all the vacuum system and power supply system were installed.

3 MV Tandetron

The 3 MV Tandetron accelerator was installed in 2012 and is mainly dedicated to applied physics experiments. The machine is fully equipped to do ion beam analysis (IBA) and implantation experiments. The first beam-line has all the necessary detectors to perform particle induced X-ray emission (PIXE), particle induced gamma ray emission (PIGE), Rutherford backscattering (RBS) and elastic recoil detection analysis (ERDA). We also have the possibility to do micro-beam analysis using a high performance focusing electrostatic quadrupole lens. The second beam-line is dedicated to implantation experiments, having the possibility to scan a wide sample surface (18x18 cm) with very accurate control of the dose. The third beam-line is a multipurpose beam-line used mainly for nuclear astrophysics experiments.

1 MV Tandetron

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is today's most sensitive isotopic analysis method known. Using a particle accelerator, usually a Tandem type, the AMS spectrometer measures one by one the ions of the investigated species. This method uses a Tandem type accelerator due to its ability to break the molecules having the same mass as the analysed atom and thus remove the unwanted molecular interference from the measurement. The AMS sensitivity can reach 10-15 scarce isotope / abundant isotope, in other words, AMS allows determination of the existence of a single atom in a torrent of one million billion other foreign atoms. So, AMS is an analytical technique for measuring low levels of long-lived radionuclides and rare trace elements. Due to its exceptional sensitivity, this method has opened a very wide range of applications in various fields: medicine, palaeogeomorphology, geology, archaeology, atmospheric physics, paleoclimatology, astrophysics, nuclear physics, nuclear pollution tracking, etc.