The Ion Beam Laboratory (IBL) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison houses an NEC 1.7 MV tandem accelerator with both TORVIS plasma and SNICS heavy ion sources and three beamlines. The IBL provides a range of irradiation setups and significant flexibility in experimental design. The facility’s capabilities are continually improved to meet the research needs of the scientific community involved in research on radiation damage of materials and other fundamental materials science research areas involving ion irradiation.
Prof. Couet co-manages the IBL with Prof. Kumar Sridharan and Prof. Charles Hirst, and Nate Eklof is the Laboratory Technician and lab manager, supported by fellow technician Zack Reilly and several undergraduate assistants. The IBL is also a Nuclear Science User Facility (NSUF), so parties interested in having work done at the IBL can visit the IBL website to learn more!
Current Projects



In-situ Molten Salt Corrosion and Radiation
The coupling of corrosion and radiation is very important to understand, but is quite difficult to study. In the IBL, a molten salt capsule has been developed which is sealed by a thin foil sample (< 0.001″). The molten salt is separated from the beam line vacuum by the foil, which is thin enough for the 2.8 MeV protons to penetrate with a nearly flat damage profile in the sample. Some regions of the foil receive just corrosion as well, such that the combined effect can be studied alongside only corrosion under the same conditions.
High Throughput Ion Irradiation
The compositionally complex alloy (CCA) space is quite vast, and rapid down selection is needed so resources for in depth study can be allocated best. Additively manufactured plates of 20-25 unique samples can be irradiated in the middle beam line chamber, which is equipped with 2 axes of motion and a 200 W laser with dual-wavelength pyrometer for localized sample heating. This enables the rapid ion irradiation of a range of compositions without having to break vacuum, saving weeks of time!






Thermal Conductivity Microscope
The thermal conductivity microscope (TCM) is a powerful new tool under development based on a system developed at Idaho National Laboratory. The TCM uses the principle of photothermal reflectance, wherein the reflectance of a material is dependent on its temperature. By locally heating the sample with a modulated 660 nm laser, a thermal wave is introduced in the material whose propagation is correlated with thermal diffusivity and conductivity. By probing the sample with another 532 nm laser, the propagation of this thermal wave, and thus the thermal properties, can be measured via the thermally modulated reflection of the laser. This technique allows for rapid measurements with high (~10s um) resolution.