The SPIRIT project: Fast ions for everybody in Europe


The SPIRIT project: Fast ions for everybody in Europe

Möller, W.; Kolitsch, A.; Merchel, S.; Zier, M.; The Spirit Consortium, W. S.-I. E.

The EC-funded project SPIRIT (Support of Public and Industrial Research using Ion beam Technology) [1] started in March 2009. It will provide free transnational access to European ion beam infrastructures for users from research and industry. Besides we will improve the methods and tools for ion-beam based analysis and processing of materials by helping European researchers to carry out state-of-the-art multidisciplinary scientific and technological research.
SPRIT partners are eleven leading ion beam facilities, i.e.
• FZD Dresden-Rossendorf (management), Germany*
• Centre d’Etudes Nucléaires de Bordeaux-Gradignan, France*
• Centre de Recherche sur les Ions, les Matériaux et la Photonique, Caen & Service de Recherche en Métallurgie Physique, Saclay, France*
• Instituto Tecnológico e Nuclear, Portugal
• Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia*
• Katholieke Universitet Leuven, Belgium*
• Ruđer Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
• Surrey Ion Beam Centre, University of Surrey, Great Britain*
• Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland
• Universität der Bundeswehr, München, Germany*
• Université de Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France
Within the project the partners use and provide fast ions (10 keV-100 MeV) for the purpose of modification and analysis of surfaces, interfaces, thin films and nanostructured systems. The partners themselves and their external users focus on fundamental and applied research spanning from material sciences over life, environmental and Earth sciences to investigations of objects from art and cultural heritage.
For example, element distributions can be determined non-destructively and standard-free by mean of ion beam analysis (IBA) including Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS), Nuclear Reaction Analysis (NRA), Elastic Recoil Detection Analysis (ERDA), Particle-Induced X-Ray (PIXE) and Gamma-Emission (PIGE) [2]. All natural-occurring elements are accessible; most elements with lateral, some in 3-D resolution (depth-range: nm-µm; depth-resolution: 0.5-30 nm). Typical detection limits are 10 µg/g (H), 500 µg/g - 1% (He-O), 1 µg/g (F), 10-100 µg/g (Na-U).
Seven SPIRIT partners – those marked above with a * – provide transnational access to researchers from the European Community. Help is provided to external users during planning, performance and evaluation of their research projects. Proposals [3] for running experiments in person (“hands-on”) or remote services are selected after a formal reviewing and ranking following scientific criteria as innovation/originality by an international expert panel. All costs including travel for external users are covered by the EC.
References: [1] www.spirit-ion.eu, contract number 227012. [2] C. Neelmeijer et al., this meeting. [3] http://www.spirit-ion.eu/Project/Transnational-Access/Application-Form.html.

Keywords: PIXE; PIGE; ion beam analysis; RBS; ERDA; NRA

  • Poster
    GDCh-Wissenschaftsforum Chemie 2009, 30.08.-02.09.2009, Frankfurt am Main, Deutschland

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Publ.-Id: 12907