Sustainability of the Tandem Accelerator Facility at the Ruđer Bošković Institute

The Laboratory for Ion Beam Interactions (LIBI) at the Ruđer Bošković Institute (RBI) began with operation in 1987, when the first ion beam was obtained from a 6 MV tandem Van de Graaff accelerator donated by the University of Houston (Texas). The first beam lines were installed for Rutherford Backscattering (RBS) and Particle Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) experiments mainly done by proton beams. To extend the applications to lower MeV ion energy range and to increase the number of beamlines, an additional 1 MV Tandetron accelerator was installed in 2005 in collaboration with the IAEA under the TC project. The main sources of funding for the operating costs of the laboratory at that time were secured through the Croatian Ministry of Science and a beamline agreement with the IAEA. In the following period of ten years (2008 - 2017), the LIBI equipment was further upgraded through the numerous projects from various sources (EU, IAEA, national funds, etc.). The acquisition of new ion sources opened the possibility to use different ions in the broad mass range, the modernization of the vacuum system resulted in better transmission of the ion beam, and the computerised accelerator control built in house enabled remote control of the accelerator. Funds from the international and national projects also provided the opportunity to employ young researchers (PhD students and postdoctoral fellows) boosting development of existing and new unique IBA techniques such as dual beam irradiation, heavy ion microbeam, IBIC, HR-PIXE, TOF-ERDA, MeV SIMS, etc. These new emerging techniques as well as other traditional IBA techniques have been successfully applied for applied research in the fields of materials science, detector physics, biology, forensics, cultural heritage, etc., thus opening a large space for the interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists from Croatia and abroad. By mastering new and unique techniques for ion beam analysis and modification, LIBI has gained international recognition and become involved in large international projects such as SPIRIT, RADIATE, AIDA2020, EUROfusion and CERIC-ERIC consortium which allow researchers (and industry) to use accelerator beamtime at LIBI through the transnational access.