Skip to main content
Ingenium Logo

You are leaving IngeniumCanada.org

✖


This link leads to an external website that Ingenium does not control. Please read the third-party’s privacy policies before entering personal information or conducting a transaction on their site.

Have questions? Review our Privacy Statement

Vous quittez IngeniumCanada.org

✖


Ce lien mène à un site Web externe qu'Ingenium ne contrôle pas. Veuillez lire les politiques de confidentialité des tiers avant de partager des renseignements personnels ou d'effectuer une transaction sur leur site.

Questions? Consultez notre Énoncé de confidentialité

Ingenium The Channel

Langue

  • Français
Search Toggle

Menu des liens rapides

  • Ingenium Locations
  • Shop
  • Donate
  • Join
Menu

Main Navigation

  • Browse
    • Categories
    • Media Types
    • Boards
    • Featured Stories
  • About
    • About The Channel
    • Content Partners

A custom-made revolution for isotope beamlines

This article was originally written and submitted as part of a Canada 150 Project, the Innovation Storybook, to crowdsource stories of Canadian innovation with partners across Canada. The content has since been migrated to Ingenium’s Channel, a digital hub featuring curated content related to science, technology and innovation.

Share
Apr 25, 2017
Categories
Sciences
Categories
Engineering & Technology
Media
Article
Profile picture for user TRIUMF
By: TRIUMF
Rare Isotope Beam

Deep in the basement of TRIUMF’s Advanced Rare IsotopE Laboratory (ARIEL), a new age for accelerator science-based research in Canada is taking shape. Amidst the bright concrete walls and distant hum of high-voltage electricity, a series of gleaming metal pipes and chambers is converging under the watchful eye of TRIUMF scientists, engineers, and technicians; an assembly that, once complete, will usher in a bright new era for subatomic physics research in Canada and internationally.

As TRIUMF’s flagship multidisciplinary research facility, ARIEL will serve to maintain TRIUMF’s position at the forefront of cutting-edge rare isotope research, a field that uses short-lived elements not typically found on Earth as means for discovery. Cutting-edge research requires cutting-edge technology improvements to support it. It was this requirement – and an innovative mindset – that inspired the design of the Rare Isotope Beam (RIB) transport system. The completed transport system will consist of 200 metres of beamline that will deliver rare isotopes from ARIEL’s target stations to the existing Isotope Separation and Acceleration (ISAC) facility experimental areas. ARIEL reached a milestone in December 2016 with the successful installation of a 15-meter prototype section, which served as a test for the new design. The RIB team aims to complete the full 200-metre installation by 2021.

The design of the RIB transport system is based on TRIUMF’s current ISAC beamlines. Like much of the mechanical technology used within the lab, both the ISAC and ARIEL RIB systems were designed entirely at TRIUMF. Physicists and engineers worked from existing commercially available technology to develop a system that fits TRIUMF’s unique research needs. “It’s not that we purchase parts from outside and just park something over here,” explains Marco Marchetto, a TRIUMF accelerator physicist and project leader for the ARIEL RIB transport system. “This is something that we completed from scratch at TRIUMF. We actually designed every aspect of this system.”

Modeling the RIB technology began with the most basic of beamline components: the electrostatic quadrupoles and benders that guide and direct the beam. Isotope beams are controlled with stationary electric fields created by four electrodes, two positive and two negative, positioned in a cloverleaf configuration exactly 50 mm apart. This distance cannot vary by more than 50 microns (the average cross-section of a human hair!), a level of precision previously achieved through complex jigs and individual alignment of electrodes. The RIB prototype team decided to instead take advantage of high-precision CNC machinery to cut the components to the required precision so that technicians need merely to tighten the bolts to align the electrodes. The process of assembling a quadrupole, once a day-long task, can now be completed in an hour. This development has a tremendous impact on the engineers and technicians devoted to assembling and installing all 200 metres of the RIB beamline.

As rare isotopes travel through the electrostatic beamline, they will also experience vacuums of ultra-low pressure. Even a single residual gas particle along the beam path could interact with the isotopes, resulting in beam loss. To prevent this, the ARIEL engineers set out to improve upon past TRIUMF designs and create a more efficient internal vacuum environment. The new design incorporates custom-made feedthroughs that connect directly to the electrodes, reducing the number of cables within the beamline. It also improves the vacuum level through the use of copper gaskets in the place of rubber seals, which separate the internal environment from outside air. As a result, the system can achieve a vacuum in the 10-9 Torr range, one hundred times smaller than what is achieved in ISAC. This improvement will allow for the transport of more than 95% of the produced beam, even for beams of highly charged ions, compared to the 70% transported in the existing ISAC beamlines. “Since the radioactive beams are very difficult to produce, you want to try to transport most of it, if not everything, down to the experimental station,” explains Marchetto.

One of the greatest challenges in designing the RIB beamline was traversing the ARIEL facility to the experimental halls; the beamline has to scale two floors and cross between multiple buildings. It was here that Norman Muller, a mechanical design engineer at TRIUMF and the RIB project integrator, stepped in to translate basic physics principles into real engineering designs. Muller implemented a cleaver system of beamline mounts. At first glance, they appear to be only loosely held together, but, upon closer inspection, the mounting system is revealed to be entirely suspended using novel ball and socket joints that rely on tension and compression. Easily assembled and adjusted, the RIB suspension system is so elegant that, as Marchetto puts it, “it looks like it’s floating on air.”

From vacuum to mounts, the entire RIB transport system was custom-designed at TRIUMF to be efficient, modern, and innovative. The RIB is a shining example of the ingenious, cutting-edge technology that prepares ARIEL, and the global physics community, for an exciting and successful future.

Tags
Innovation Storybook
Author(s)
Profile picture for user TRIUMF
TRIUMF
Follow

TRIUMF is Canada’s particle accelerator centre. From the hunt for the smallest particles in the universe to the development of new technologies, including next-generation batteries and medical isotopes, TRIUMF is pushing the frontiers in research to advance science, medicine, and business.

https://www.triumf.ca/

Related Stories

Two images spliced: On the left, different plant-based milk alternatives, on the right, an overhead view of the Spirit rover.

2 things - and more! - you should know about plant-based milk alternatives and weather on Mars

Black and white horizontal photograph of man wearing glasses who is laying on his side on the ground feeding a small squirrel by hand.

Reading Expedition Photographs in the Frank T. Davies Fonds

A red plastic telephone with the handset off of the base on a light grey table. There are scratches on the phone which is an angular design. The rotary dial is on the handset and attached to the base by a red spiral cord.

A Phone Call from Below the Arctic Ice - The 50th Anniversary of Arctic III Sub-Igloo Phone Call to Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau

Spliced image, from left to right: a seismometer on mars, a heap of red rhubarb stalks with green leaves, a copper roof of the Canaian Parliament

3 Things you should know about marsquakes, the value of urine, and the chemistry of rhubarb

A dirty glass slide of a stromatolite with a dirty cotton swab at the bottom; a close-up on a bee with a green head and thorax on a yellow flower; a false colour 3D view of the surface of Venus showing volcanoes and lava flowing towards the foreground.

3 Things you should know about how native bees are important pollinators, how saliva is used to clean artifacts, and active volcanism on Venus

A spliced photo, from left to right: Shaun the Sheep in front of a model of ESA’s European Service Module, a top view into a red bucket containing thousands of light-brown, rod-shaped pellets, and a toddler wearing a wool hat and wool sweater holds a grownup’s finger.

3 things you should know about why wool keeps us warm, and about its surprising uses in the garden and in space.

A large impact crater viewed from the rim, a woodern spoon full of small yellow grains, a close up of a forearm being tattooed.

3 things you should know about the untapped potential of millet, the permanence of tattoos, and asteroid airbursts

Three images side by side: a toilet bowl expelling a cloud of droplets, a gloved hand holding a test tube containing a small plant, and an infrared view of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io showing spots of volcanic activity covering the moon.

3 things you should know about flushing the toilet, artificial photosynthesis, and volcanic activity on Jupiter's moon

Headshots of 33 women, showing the diversity of women in AI and Robotics

Women in AI & Robotics: An interview with Founder and CEO, Sheila Beladinejad

A rear view of a person wearing a yellow coat and backpack in winter, a close-up view of bright red poinsettias with small yellow central flowers.

Two things you should know about the science of wind chill, and the Orion spacecraft's selfies.

A woman examining a bottle of olive oil in a grocery store, Gravel terrain in beige with boulders identified in pink, craters in purple, and crater rims in turquoise, A close up of the tread of a winter tire showing deep, wide, jagged grooves and wavy sipes.

3 things you should know about food fraud, how winter tires work and Canadian artificial intelligence headed for the Moon.

Three images side by side: A little girl smells a sunflower, the DART spacecraft’s impact into the asteroid Dimorphos, and a candy apple

3 things you should know about how the DART spacecraft changed the orbit of an asteroid, how we have more than five senses, and how the science of caramel can make you a better cook!

Footer

About The Channel

The Channel

Contact Us

Ingenium
P.O. Box 9724, Station T
Ottawa ON K1G 5A3
Canada

613-991-3044
1-866-442-4416
contact@IngeniumCanada.org
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Channel

    • Channel Home
    • About the Channel
    • Content Partners
  • Visit

    • Online Resources for Science at Home
    • Canada Agriculture and Food Museum
    • Canada Aviation and Space Museum
    • Canada Science and Technology Museum
    • Ingenium Centre
  • Ingenium

    • Ingenium Home
    • About Ingenium
    • The Foundation
  • For Media

    • Newsroom
    • Awards

Connect with us

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest Ingenium news straight to your inbox!

Sign Up

Legal Bits

Ingenium Privacy Statement

© 2023 Ingenium

Symbol of the Government of Canada
  • Browse
    • Categories
    • Media Types
    • Boards
    • Featured Stories
  • About
    • About The Channel
    • Content Partners