Industrial and medical applications of high-energy ions

Low and medium energy accelerators are successfully employed for industrial purposes world-wide. However, there is an increasing demand of high energy ion beams. On the other hand there exits no heavy ion, high energy accelerator dedicated to industry up to now. Hence, industry has to request beam times at accelerators dedicated to research. Industrial ion beam applications include, among others, materials modification – ranging from filter production using high ion-beam intensities to single ion track applications like nano-electronic devices. Due to the fast development in highly integrated electronics, there is an increasing demand of radiation hardness tests requiring a broad range of different ion species and energies as well as suitable target chambers. In this paper, we will present an overview of the different industrial applications, many of them performed at the Ion Beam Laboratory ISL together with the corresponding necessary equipment. The challenges and demands of industry – quite different from research – will be discussed.