AN OVERVIEW OF THE ION-BEAM ANALYSIS LABORATORY AT WHITE-OAK

The Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) at White Oak is completing a major upgrading of its positive-ion accelerator facilities dedicated to the study of ion-atom collisions and ion-beam analysis of materials. At the heart of the facility is a new National Electrostatics Corporation 3 MV tandem accelerator which replaced a 2.5 MV Van de Graaff. There are two ion sources available which will enable the accelerator to produce an ion from nearly any element in the periodic table. Mass-energy control is defined by a 90-degrees analyzing magnet. A downstream switching magnet allows for the establishment of five separate beam lines. Currently three beam lines are in operation: an RBS and PIXE analysis system, an NRA analysis system, and an experimental line for measuring the stopping powers of ions in gases. In addition to numerous PCs for data manipulation, a VAX computer system is being upgraded to perform computer-controlled acquisition and analysis of spectral data. Details on the upgrade will be presented as well as recent results of ion-beam analysis.