ERD, 15N external beam for NRRA in air, HIRBS: ion beam analysis developments on the HVEC EN-1 Tandem

In the last year, EN-1, the first HVEC Tandem accelerator, has gone through a major upgrade in which the injector, charging system and tubes were replaced. In addition, the ion beam analysis facilities have been upgraded and expanded. The gas-counter ERD set-up, previously installed on the former TASCC accelerator at Chalk River, is now operating with a new data-acquisition system. This system also interfaces with the surface barrier detector and TOF based ERD facilities (both of which were developed at the University of Montréal). Gas-counter and ERD-TOF are compared in terms of sensitivity, pileup, depth and mass resolution, and efficiency in the case of hydrogen detection. The 15N NRRA technique has been extended to include an external beam capability. This allows, for example, in situ profiling of hydrogen in metallic hydrides exposed to different partial pressures of hydrogen.