MRI: Acquisition of an ion accelerator and instrumentation upgrade

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This award allows the replacement of the unreliable 1970s vintage ion accelerator and supporting beam components in the Department of Physics at East Carolina University (ECU) with a modern ion beam system based on a new positive-ion tandem accelerator. The new system will provide stable, energetic light and heavy ion beams in an energy range of 300 keV to 8 MeV, perfectly suited for the laboratory's research in radiation physics, atomic interactions in gases and solids, and trace element analysis. The research involves faculty, graduate students, and numerous undergraduate students. In addition to basic and applied physics research, the laboratory is being used for interdisciplinary research with the Departments of Biology, Geology, Anthropology, and the ECU Brody School of Medicine. The research at this facility contributes directly to the central mission of ECU and the University of North Carolina system by training students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. In particular, it fills a critical need in the region, the state, and the nation by training students in science. The technical knowledge gained, and more importantly the critical thinking skills developed, through this training in experimental physics can be applied broadly across all fields of science and engineering. These highly trained students will contribute to the technically literate workforce critically needed in the United States. East Carolina University serves the primarily rural, economically depressed eastern portion of North Carolina, and has a relatively high minority student population. The student training supported by the proposed instrumentation will continue to include, as it has in the past, minority students that are severely underrepresented in science, and particularly in physics. The proposed instrumentation will also serve as a recruiting tool to increase student interest in science and encourage student participation in research.