Industrial Accelerators and Their Applications

The following sections are included:

• DEDICATION

• CONTENTS

The goal of this book is to present for the first time in more than 25 years a review of the broad range of technologies and applications of "Industrial Accelerators". For purposes of this work, we consider any charged particle accelerator that generates an external electron or ion beam for any beam process other than direct medical treatment or basic research to be an industrial accelerator. We do not include self-contained low-energy devices such as cathode ray tubes, X-ray tubes, radio frequency and microwave power tubes, and electron microscopes in this category even though they are used mostly for industrial purposes. However, we do consider the accelerator production of therapeutic or diagnostic radionuclides for nuclear medicine an industrial application because these are either stand-alone ingredients or end products that are for the most part produced by for-profit businesses using commercially-built accelerators…

Ion acceleration of dopants and other ions is a critical and nearly universally employed tool for the fabrication of transistors in IC devices and the various forms of electronic, photovoltaic, and photonic materials. This chapter reviews the major types of accelerators, ions sources, and scanning methods used in contemporary practice for ion implantation for electronic, photovoltaic, and biomedical applications.

In electron beam processing, a well-defined beam of relatively energetic electrons produced by a high voltage acceleration gap is used to transmit thermal energy into a material in a precise manner. This controlled deposition of heat is employed in a wide variety of industrial applications for precision cutting, drilling, and welding of materials as well as annealing, glazing, and surface hardening. This chapter will describe the equipment used and the most prominent industrial applications for this process.

Radiation processing is a well established method for enhancing the properties of materials and commercial products by treating them with ionizing energy in the form of high-energy electrons, X-rays, and gamma rays. Beneficial effects include polymerizing, cross-linking, grafting and degrading plastics, sterilizing single-use medical devices, disinfecting and disinfesting fresh foods, purifying drinking water, treating wastewater and other toxic waste materials that harm the environment, and many other applications that are still being evaluated. Industrial electron accelerators of several types have been developed and are being used for these applications. More than 1800 electron accelerators are presently installed in facilities worldwide for these purposes.

While many radioactive isotopes in use today are found in nature, many more are artificially produced by irradiating target materials with nuclear particles. Two different technologies can provide the energetic particles needed: nuclear reactors, which produce a flux of neutrons, and particle accelerators, which produce a flux of charged particles. This chapter will deal with the important aspects of the production of radionuclides with accelerators, along with some details on their applications, commercially-available accelerator systems used for this purpose, and the size of the equipment business.

Ion beam analysis techniques are finding more and more industrial applications both for product- and process-development. This chapter presents an overview of these techniques. The methods are broadly divided into content-measuring and depth distribution-measuring techniques. Moreover, guidelines for introduction of accelerators for industrial materials analysis into an industrial environment and the instrumentation are discussed.

Advances in neutron science have gone hand in hand with the development of particle accelerators from the beginning of both fields. Early accelerator systems were developed simply to produce neutrons, allowing scientists to study their properties and interactions with matter, but people quickly realized that more tangible uses existed for them. Today, these systems are in use in such diverse applications as mineral assaying, oil well logging, radiography, and explosive detection to name a few. This chapter presents a technical introduction to the different ways particle accelerators are used to produce neutrons, an historical overview of the development of neutron-producing particle accelerators, a description of current industrial accelerator systems, narratives of the industrial fields where neutron-producing particle accelerators are used today, and comments on future trends.

This chapter focuses on the role of electron accelerators that produce X-rays in NDT applications and emphasizes topics of interest to those using accelerator-based inspection products. In addition, it highlights the developments in digital detector technology that have become the precursor to more sophisticated digital radiography and computed tomography applications as well as the emerging security inspection market. Because the demand for accelerators for cargo inspection has vastly exceeded all other industrial NDT applications, this market segment, its special requirements, and future trends are comprehensively discussed. Accelerator systems that are specifically designed to produce neutrons can also be used for some of the same applications, but these are covered in Chapter 6.

Synchrotron radiation (SR) has become one of the most valuable tools for many areas of basic and applied research. In some cases, techniques have been developed that rely completely on the specific properties of synchrotron radiation; in many other cases, using synchrotron radiation has opened completely new and exciting opportunities for conventional techniques. In this chapter, the challenges, problems, and advantages of the industrial use of synchrotron radiation will be highlighted, in an admittedly subjective way, based on the experience of the authors at various synchrotron radiation facilities. "Typical" examples of industrial use of SR will be discussed for all areas of industrial activities, i.e., production, quality control and control of regulatory requirements, and research and development. Emphasis will be put on examples from R&D as this is the most intensively used area. Because this field is much too broad for a complete review here, examples will focus on applications from just three major sectors: biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, and automotive and mining. Environmental research is a fourth area that will be partly covered in the section on regulatory requirements.

The following sections are included:

• INDEX