The Birmingham Irradiation Facility

At the end of 2012 the proton irradiation facility at the CERN PS [1] will shut down for two years. With this in mind, we have been developing a new ATLAS scanning facility at the University of Birmingham Medical Physics cyclotron. With proton beams of energy approximately 30 MeV, fluences corresponding to those of the upgraded Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) can be reached conveniently. The facility can be used to irradiate silicon sensors, optical components and mechanical structures (e.g. carbon fibre sandwiches) for the LHC upgrade programme. Irradiations of silicon sensors can be carried out in a temperature controlled cold box that can be scanned through the beam. The facility is described in detail along with the first tests carried out with mini (1×1 cm2) silicon sensors.