Trends and applications for MeV electrostatic ion beam accelerators

The 1970s into the 1980s saw a major broadening of applications for electrostatic accelerators. Prior to this time, all accelerators were used primarily for nuclear structure research. In the 70s there was a significant move into production ion implantation with the necessary MeV ion beam analysis techniques such as RBS and ERD. Accelerators are still being built for these materials analysis techniques today. However, there is still a great ongoing expansion of applications for these machines. At the present time, the demand for electrostatic accelerators is near an all time high. The number of applications continues to grow. This paper will touch on some of the current applications which are as diverse as nuclear fission reactor developments and pharmacokinetics. In the field of nuclear engineering, MeV ion beams from electrostatic accelerators are being used in material damage studies and for iodine and actinide accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). In the field of pharmacokinetics, electrostatic MeV accelerators are being used to detect extremely small amounts of above background 14C. This has significantly reduced the time required to reach first in human studies. These and other applications will be discussed.