Periodic Reporting for period 3 - RADIATE (Research And Development with Ion Beams – Advancing Technology in Europe)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2022-01-01 al 2023-06-30
• Physics
• Material Science
• Engineering and Technology
• Earth and Environmental Sciences
• Life Sciences and Biology
• Information and Communication Technology
• Chemistry
• Energy
and, thus, addresses a manifold of present-day technological developments and problems of profound societal interest. Main objectives of the project are:
• Provision of easy, flexible and efficient access for researchers from academia and industry to Europe’s key ion beam facilities
• Opening Europe’s ion beam facilities to users from new communities and young researchers, and widening the services for users
• Increasing the visibility and the awareness of ion beam facilities in Europe and creating an Ion Beam Web Portal as a common platform for information
• Supporting experienced and new users of ion beam facilities in handling and analysing their data by providing ion beam related software and databases
• Intensifying and consolidating the cooperation between European ion beam centers
• Expanding the cooperation with ion beam centers outside Europe
• Further developing and upgrading the ion beam infrastructures
• Consolidating and widening the access to the ion beam centers by European industry
• Cooperating with other European infrastructure communities
• Shaping the European Research Area by achieving long-term sustainability of the ion beam centers
• The Ion Beam Web Portal (https://www.ionbeamcenters.eu/) has been created and continuously updated. The portal serves as an ion technology platform for and beyond RADIATE. Its public section informs about the consortium and the progress of the project. It displays dissemination products, allowed to submit proposals for TA, and accepted applications for training actions. It offers a comprehensive list of software related to ion beam optics, ion beam analysis and simulation of ion-solid interaction. It is being maintained by the Coordinator after the termination of RADIATE. Non-RADIATE facilities have been actively invited to be listed on the website.
• The user request for TA at 12 infrastructures has exceeded the expectations at the beginning of the project significantly despite of the restrictions by the COVID-19 pandemic. For 492 user proposals accepted by the User Selection Panel, a total of 19.584 user hours has been delivered. 347 scientists took part in hands-on user campaigns, while 35% of the campaigns were conducted in hands-off mode.
• Averaging between 40-80 visitors a day, the ion beam web portal - just as the bi-annually published newsletter - has been a key resource for information about the project to the ion beam community and beyond. RADIATE partners were present at numerous conferences raising awareness for transnational access and reaching new user groups. Successes have been achieved particularly in the atmospheric aerosol research community for using ion beam techniques for their studies. The RADIATE training programs were majorly hindered by COVID-19. Despite this, several twinning and guest researcher stays could be realized in 2022 and 2023. To raise awareness of the project and the various ion beam techniques, two animated movies geared toward the general public were commissioned during the project runtime featuring ion beam analysis and accelerator mass spectrometry. The latter one is currently gathering traction, for example, in the Australian AMS community and will in future be used to demonstrate the technique and its possibilities.
• In the final phase of the project, RADIATE has set up a Long-Term Sustainability Plan for European ion beam laboratories. Most of the infrastructures expect their institutional funding to remain stable or to increase moderately. They will actively take part in new thematic programmes by the European Union. The majority of the RADIATE infrastructures dedicate a major fraction of their total beamtime (between 10% and 60%) to industrial cooperation and services, which is considered to be essential for future sustainability. The IonBeamCenters.eu website created by RADIATE will be maintained and extended by HZDR as a forum of communication and information around the European ion beam centers community.
• In order to promote the exploitation of research results in selected European countries with minor industrialization, RADIATE has set up an Innovation Management program at three beneficiaries in Croatia, Hungary, and Slovenia. Promising hardware items were identified with business plans being developed, which resulted in several sales to customers. Intentions to obtain intellectual property rights failed so far due to missing funds. However, in accelerator technology for radiobiological irradiation, one European patent has been filed, and another one has been applied for.