Grant: Major Resources Support Program - Infrastructure

The Canadian Charged Particle Accelerator Consortium (CCPAC) is a Major Resource providing charged particle beams for analysis and modification of materials to a wide variety of academic and other users from Canada and abroad. The services provided by CCPAC are essential for progress in such diverse applications as automotive lubricant development, detectors for particle and dark-matter physics, functional coatings, innovative nuclear reactor technology, and fundamental condensed matter physics. The resource consists of three megavolt tandem accelerators and associated beam lines. A 1.7 MV Tandetron accelerator with beamlines for Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry / Channeling and high-current ion implantation and a 6 MV Pelletron Tandem accelerator with 7 beam lines are housed at the Université de Montréal and a 1.7 MV Tandetron with 4 beam lines which includes Medium Energy Ion Scattering capability is housed at the University of Western Ontario. These accelerators provide ion beams with energies ranging from 25 keV to 75 MeV. Essentially the entire periodic system can be accelerated.During the last three years, CCPAC allocated more than 50 % of the available beam time to off-campus users from more than 20 Canadian Universities and laboratories from 7 provinces, and from abroad (10 different countries). More than 100 students gained hands-on experience ranging from manipulating a simple vacuum sub-system to developing a new ion scattering system. The accelerators are expensive to run, and we request funding from NSERC to help maintain the facility in a state of readiness.