A team of B.C. scientists and engineers drawn from the TRIUMF laboratory and PAVAC Industries, Inc., announced today they have entered into an elite league of groups worldwide able to manufacture ultra-sophisticated superconducting accelerator technology. The B.C. team was able to fabricate, assemble, and test a high-tech device known as a “superconducting radio-frequency cavity” or SRF cavity. This success is a first for Canada and registers the country into an exclusive group of only five groups in the world with this coveted capability. These superconducting devices are assembled into modules to form next-generation accelerators with applications in health care, environmental mitigation and remediation, advanced materials science, and high-energy physics.
“This milestone is truly significant,” said TRIUMF director Nigel S. Lockyer. “The push for this technology started in particle-physics research but it is growing in demand all over the world. And Canada now has the ability to compete for and contribute to that market.” This technology is at the leading edge and rapidly expanding; laboratories around the world are lining up to incorporate it into their future projects. Literally tens of thousands of the devices will be needed over the next decade.
The superconducting accelerator modules are so technologically sophisticated that until now, only four industry-based groups in the world have had the capability to produce them. The most challenging element is the cavity itself, a hollow cylinder fashioned from pure niobium used to capture and store radio-frequency energy (similar to that broadcast by a radio station). Particles passing through the cavity receive a dramatic boost in energy. Accelerated particle beams are used in semiconductor chip manufacturing, sterilization and imaging in hospitals, and in many research laboratories for probing the detailed structure of materials, molecules, or even atoms and nuclei themselves.
The TRIUMF team was headed by Robert Laxdal who sought out PAVAC Industries, Inc, in Richmond, B.C., for their expertise in the tricky step of careful welding in a vacuum. Laxdal said, “We developed the first stage of the TRIUMF project using cavities fabricated in Italy; during the second stage of the project, the TRIUMF/PAVAC partnership was formed with the goal to develop a `Made in Canada’ solution.” PAVAC is a world leader in developing commercial high-energy electron beam applications, most notably the PAVAC LASTRON beam for Electron Beam Welding, which was integral to the manufacture of the cavities.
For coverage in Business in Vancouver, please see the May 6, 2008, issue.
by Timothy Meyer
TRIUMF'S Head of Strategic Planning & Communications