There are also a number of materials analysis techniques based on electrostatic acceleration of heavy ions, including Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS), particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE), accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), Elastic recoil detection (ERD), and others.Īlthough these machines primarily accelerate atomic nuclei, there are a number of compact machines used to accelerate electrons for industrial purposes including sterilization of medical instruments, x-ray production, and silicon wafer production. In industry and materials science they are used to produce ion beams for materials modification, including ion implantation and ion beam mixing. In the realm of fundamental research, they are used to provide beams of atomic nuclei for research at energies up to several hundreds of MeV. While all linacs accelerate particles in a straight line, electrostatic accelerators use a fixed accelerating field from a single high voltage source, while radiofrequency linacs use oscillating electric fields across a series of accelerating gaps.Įlectrostatic accelerators have a wide array of applications in science and industry. High energy oscillating field accelerators usually incorporate an electrostatic machine as their first stage, to accelerate particles to a high enough velocity to inject into the main accelerator.Įlectrostatic accelerators are a subset of linear accelerators (linacs). Many universities worldwide have electrostatic accelerators for research purposes. As such, they are by far the most widely used particle accelerators, with industrial applications such as plastic shrink wrap production, high power X-ray machines, radiation therapy in medicine, radioisotope production, ion implanters in semiconductor production, and sterilization. The advantages of electrostatic accelerators over oscillating field machines include lower cost, the ability to produce continuous beams, and higher beam currents that make them useful to industry. Oscillating accelerators do not have this limitation, so they can achieve higher particle energies than electrostatic machines. This is in turn limited by insulation breakdown to a few megavolts. The maximum particle energy produced by electrostatic accelerators is limited by the maximum voltage which can be achieved the machine. The two most common types are the Van de Graaf generator invented by Robert Van de Graaff in 1929, and the Cockcroft-Walton accelerator invented by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton in 1932. Owing to their simpler design, electrostatic types were the first particle accelerators. This contrasts with the other major category of particle accelerator, oscillating field particle accelerators, in which the particles are accelerated by oscillating electric fields. The high voltage generator is right, the ion source and beam tube is at leftĪn electrostatic particle accelerator is a particle accelerator in which charged particles are accelerated to a high energy by a static high voltage potential. 750 keV Cockcroft-Walton accelerator initial stage of the KEK accelerator in Tsukuba, Japan.
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