Material analysis and testing using a proton therapy facility

A new Proteus (IBA) proton therapy facility will be installed at the Charleroi hospital in Belgium. In addition to medical applications, material analysis and testing will be developed. We will present here the facility and the future material projects with this machine. A special feature will be the ability to get proton beams from 5 to 230 MeV.
Ion beams can be used to modify the properties of materials or to carry out ionizing radiation withstand tests, for example for the space industry sector. Studies for applications in the space domain will mainly include radiation withstand testing of electronic components and coatings for the space industry. These measurements will be performed at different energies between 30 and 200 MeV. These energies are required to model the SEE (Single Event Effects) which are one of the main degradation phenomena for space systems subjected to the solar wind.
The characteristics in terms of beam size and especially energy modulation will allow to associate ion beam analysis techniques such as PIXE (Particle Induced X-Ray Emission) and PIGE (Particle Induced Range ray emission). in the high energy mode to follow changes in irradiated materials in real time. The use of high energy beam (> 5MeV) will allow the effects to be analyzed at greater depths than by conventional techniques. These studies can therefore also be extended to other areas of research, particularly for the analysis of cultural heritage objects. As with the study of spatial components, the PBS mode (Pencil Beam Scanning) will accurately measure and modulate the dose received by each element of irradiated systems.