The Louisiana Accelerator Center
From the Director
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Louisiana Accelerator Center |
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P.O. Box 42410
Lafayette, LA 70504-2410
Office: (337) 482-6184 Fax: (337) 482-6190
http://lac.louisiana.edu
Universite des Acadiens |
We have created this website to
provide an introduction to the research and development presently underway
at LAC. Although the content of the website will be relatively extensive
when completed, please contact one of the staff at LAC for more details on
any topic.
The Louisiana Accelerator Center (LAC) at the University
of Louisiana at Lafayette is recognized as a Research Center by the Louisiana
Board of Regents. The laboratory facilities at LAC are utilized for
research in applied physics, materials science and engineering. LAC
is divided into three functional areas: (1) accelerator control room, shielded
target room and experimental area (5,000 sq. ft.), (2) small laboratory
and office spaces (2,300 sq. ft.), and (3) machine shop (3,000 sq. ft.),
inside storage area (2,300 sq. ft.) and outside storage area (400 sq. ft.). The
target room contains optical and electron microscopy areas and a 1.7 MV
tandem PelletronR accelerator, with duoplasmatron, radio-frequency
and cesium sputtering negative ion sources. With the addition of
a high energy focused ion beam (HEFIB) microbeam system, providing a variety
of analytical and modification techniques using ion beams with cross sectional
sizes as small as 1 µm x 1 µm, a total of three beamlines are now in use
on the accelerator: (1) ion beam analysis, (2) ion beam modification, and
(3) HEFIB microprobe.
The
unique LAC microprobe system uses a magnetic quadrupole triplet lens system
to routinely focus high energy ion beams to dimensions smaller than 1 µm
x 1 µm for the purpose of conducting basic research in many areas of materials
physics and engineering. The HEFIB microprobe has applications in
microfabrication and bio-analysis that are genuinely unique to the state
of Louisiana and the nation as well, and early studies indicate that these
HEFIB microprobe applications have an extremely high potential to provide
a wide range of unique research capabilities. LAC recently completed
construction of a new sextuplet lens HEFIB system to provide a beam spot
size less than 500 nm x 500 nm, thereby surpassing reported capabilities
of many competing systems worldwide. Operational tests on that system
are now in progress.
The
LAC HEFIB microprobe provides significant 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional
micro-analysis capability, over very small regions, for researchers in
metallurgy, mineralogy, geology, geochemistry, environmental sciences,
archaeology, semiconductors, microbiology, plant sciences, biology, and
medicine. Development of the microbeam technology to such applications
as direct writing of lithography masks, production of 3-dimensional, high
aspect ratio microstructures and rapid prototyping of micro-electromechanical
systems (MEMS), to name a few, has already begun. There are few,
if any, accelerator facilities existing at other academic institutions
in the U.S. like the one at LAC, and LAC is the only U.S. facility that
has demonstrated high energy proton beam lithography. The HEFIB
nanoprobe system is expected to greatly extend the range of possible research
projects, thereby providing a common link among an extremely wide array
of research disciplines.
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