Opportunities for See Testing and Research at the Chalk River Tascc Heavy Ion Facility

Abstract

The Chalk River Laboratories' Tandem Accelerator Superconducting Cyclotron (TASCC) facility comprises a 15 MV M P Tandem which can be used alone or in conjunction with a superconducting cyclotron postaccelerator. TASCC provides ions from protons to uranium and energies from a few MeV to almost 3000 MeV. The facility can thus cover the complete range of LET's required for SEE testing, with the added bonus of longer ranges to better simulate the effects of cosmic radiation. A simple irradiation chamber has been used for the study of individual devices for some time; a state-of-the-art SEE facility is being developed for testing circuit boards in vacuum or in air, This paper will describe the properties of TASCC, and the existing and planned irradiation systems. A. IntroductionSingle Event Effects (SEES) induced by heavy-ion cosmic radiation are a major concern in the design of equipment for high altitude aircraft and space systems. Ground-based testing plays an important role in the development of devices and systems that can function reliably in the radiation environment of space. It is likely that the move toward off-the-shelf rather than radiation resistant mil-standard devices will make pre-flight testing all the more critical.There is increasing evidence [ 1,2] that LET alone is insufficient to fully define the SEE cross-sections for heavy ions in semi-conductor devices. Range, total-energy deposition or track structure are also important considerations.The TASCC (Tandem Accelerator Superconducting Cyclotron) facility at AECL's Chalk River Laboratories is ideally suited for SEE research because of its wide range of ions and energies, which can faithfully simulate the effects of heavy-ion radiation in space. The 15 MV MP Tandem, operating alone, is comparable in performance to a number of other test facilities; the 10 fold gain in energy with the superconducting cyclotron postaccelerator allows a full exploration of the LET curve, both below and above the Bragg peak, as well as the possibility of more than 10-fold greater ranges compared to Tandem operation alone. 0-7803-3100-1/95 $4.00 0 1995 IEEE KOJ 1 JO This paper will describe the operation of the TASCC facility and the present and proposed SEE research capability. B. The TASCC Facilitv TASCC, located within the Chalk River Laboratories of AECL (Atomic Energy of Canada Limited), is situated about 200 km west of Ottawa on the TransCanada Highway.TASCC operates as a National Laboratory for Heavy Ion Research with about 80% of the beam time allocated to physics and 20% to applications. Scheduling of beam time is done about every three months with a call for proposals a month ahead of the end of the scheduling period. (Efforts are made to adjust the schedule to accommodate cases of extreme urgency.) 1 04