Research facilities and highlights at the Centro Nacional de Aceleradores (CNA)

Abstract

The Centro Nacional de Aceleradores is a user-oriented accelerator facility in Seville, Spain. Its main facilities are a 3 MV tandem accelerator, an 18 MeV proton Cyclotron, a tandetron used for AMS, a compact accelerator used for radiocarbon measurements, a $$^{60}$$ 60 Co irradiator and a PET/CT scanner. The technical specifications and research applications of these facilities are described. A neutron beam line associated to a charged pulsed beam in the tandem allows for time of flight measurements which determine the neutron energy. The use of an adequate stripper gas in the AMS tandetron permits to measure heavy radionuclides with very low detection levels, allowing to perform environmental studies using these radionuclides as tracers. The use of the microbeam in the tandem accelerator allows to apply the ion beam-induced current technique to investigate the spectroscopic properties and radiation hardness of different semiconductor detectors.

Ultra-Large Silicon Diode for Characterizing Low-Intensity Radiation Environments

“…To retrieve the k factor (eq. ( 1)), allowing to calculate deposited energy from the detector's signal, a calibration campaign was performed in Centro Nacional de Aceleradores (CNA; Sevilla, ES) [16], [17].…”

“…. Measured and simulated energy deposited in the silicon diode as per primary16 O 8+ ion impacting the Al-target in the LINAC3 at CERN. Measured values were multiplied by 2.2 for visibility purposes.…”

Description and outlook of the 50,53Cr(n,γ) cross section measurement at n_TOF and HiSPANoS

“…The MACS (Maxwellian Averaged Cross Section) of 50 Cr has been measured at the HiS-PANoS [12] facility at CNA [16]. A quasi-Maxwellian neutron spectrum (QMNS) with a temperature of 30 keV has been produced as usual via the 7 Li(p,n) 7 Be reaction with 1912 keV protons [17].…”

Study of Ionization Charge Density-Induced Gain Suppression in LGADs

“…The IBIC and TRIBIC measurements were performed at the nuclear microprobe beamline of the CNA 3 MV tandem accelerator (Figure 6) [15]. The beam passes through a scanning coil which is the responsible of deflecting the ion beam to scan areas of a defined size.…”