European Ion Beam Infrastructures for Materials and Transdisciplinary Research

Ion beam techniques have emerged as key enabling technologies across the international research landscape, vital to innovation in functional materials for special applications, and fields as diverse as cancer treatment, nanomaterials, renewable energy, advanced electronics, and the preservation of cultural heritage. Europe maintains one of the largest groupings of ion beam facilities in the world, and through strategic EU and national support, is poised to become a global leader in ion beam innovation.
Within the HZDR-coordinated EU-FP7 program SPIRIT the leading European ion beam centers have established common standards, best practices and a single point of access for European users to these facilities in the area of materials research which led to an increasing user interest. Now these best practices have to be transferred.
On the one hand to ion beam centers, which could not participate in the previous project, in order to broaden the accessibility of ion beam technology. One current example is the technology transfer of HZDR to the newly established ion beam center SLOVAKION in Trnava in Slovakia in the framework of an EU teaming activity. On the other hand ultra-sensitive technologies like accelerator mass spectrometry, which have not been in the focus of the past integrating activities mainly devoted to materials research, have to be structured at the European level in a similar way in order to significantly widen the potential user community to transdisciplinary research, i.e. in the areas of climate change, efficient and safe use of energy and resources, and healthcare. Last but not least, the industrial use of ion beam technology has to be further promoted. In contrast to rather small industrial use of synchrotron and neutron facilities, the leading ion beam centers in Europe deliver typically around 20% of their beam time to industrial users. However, past experience has shown that industrial use of ion beam technology is predominantly on a national scale basis. Hence, it becomes even more important to foster ion beam technology in European countries that have not yet developed their capabilities to full extent.