PIF & NIF

TRIUMF’s Proton Irradiation Facility (PIF) and Neutron Irradiation Facility (NIF) are among the world’s premier facilities for testing the radiation effects of protons and neutrons on electronic equipment. 

Used annually by about 200 companies, national laboratories and universities from a dozen countries, PIF & NIF enable these clients to evaluate whether their electronic equipment can stand up to real-world conditions. 

Every second, high-energy cosmic rays from the Sun and distant, long-ago stellar explosions bombard the Earth’s atmosphere. As a result, electronic components in equipment from satellites to airplanes to smartphones experience potentially damaging protons and neutrons. These can cause a dropped mobile phone call, a computer server error or even a satellite or aircraft malfunction. 

PIF & NIF deliver protons and neutrons with energies tuned to match the range of energies found in the natural environment, whether Earth orbit, airplane altitude, or ground-level. These protons and neutrons are delivered at a much higher rate than occur naturally, enabling users to test samples in a commercially practical timeframe. For example, the radiation effects on a computer chip of a seven-year satellite mission can be simulated in just 30 minutes.  

PIF & NIF operate on a fee-for-service basis. NIF serves a wide range of Canadian and international avionics, microelectronics and communications technology companies, including Boeing and Cisco Systems. PIF’s users include Canadian space-technology companies, NASA, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), satellite manufacturer MDA Corporation, and others. See a list of recent PIF & NIF users here. 

Leading electronics companies, universities and national laboratories worldwide rely on PIF & NIF for their unique ability to deliver high-quality proton and neutron beams to precisely and rapidly simulate the radiation environments of space, aircraft altitude, or ground level.  

The increasing miniaturization of electronic components makes space-radiation testing an increasingly critical performance reliability issue for equipment from satellites to smartphones. 

As electronic devices decrease in size and pack more bits into a memory, they can operate with less voltage. This makes them more susceptible to proton and neutron damage: when a proton or neutron hits the electronics depositing its energy, there’s a greater chance this will “flip a bit” or turn a digital 0 into a 1, or vice-versa. 

The radiation environment in space is complex, varying with both location and time, and satellites and other space vehicles have different amounts and types of radiation shielding. Thus, engineers and scientists testing electronic components require proton energies from a few MeV up to several hundred MeV. This makes TRIUMF’s 520 MeV cyclotron an ideal proton source, with the ability to deliver protons over a wide range of energies. 

Located in TRIUMF’s Meson Hall, PIF uses two dedicated beam lines. BL2C1 (Beam Line 2C1) provides proton test energies from 5 MeV to 105 MeV.  BL1B (Beam Line 1B) delivers low intensity protons with higher test energies of either 355 MeV or 480 MeV. The latter is the only accessible beam line in the world able to produce this range in energy and intensity of protons. 

Both beam lines deliver protons to the same PIF testing location. Here, clients use laser-guided positioning to mount their electronics for testing on a device-mounting plate. A secondary control room is used to monitor the beam line characteristics while test electronics are irradiated.

In the Earth’s atmosphere, cosmic ray high-energy protons smash into nitrogen and oxygen nuclei, breaking them into smaller nuclei and releasing neutrons, a process called cosmic ray spallation. These cosmogenic neutrons have much higher energy than neutrons produced by a nuclear reactor, and thus require an accelerator such as TRIUMF’s main cyclotron for production.  

The range of neutron energies, or the spectrum, produced by NIF is very similar to the natural atmospheric spectrum, and thus ideal for electronics testing. The natural rate, or flux, of cosmogenic neutrons varies with altitude.  

The process for simulating the effect of cosmogenic neutrons on an electronic component begins with the firing of a high-energy proton beam (beamline BL1A) into an aluminum block in the Meson Hall. The proton impact induces spallation reactions, spewing out neutrons, which are delivered to the heavily shielded testing region at the end of the Meson Hall.  

The device to be tested is mounted on a moveable steel plate. The plate and attached electronics are lowered by cable down a five-metre-long vertical shaft that penetrates the radiation shielding, into the neutron beam. The neutron flux is remotely monitored, and once the desired dose is reached the device is lifted out of the beam. In addition to BL1A, neutron testing can also be performed on either BL2C1 or BL1B by converting the incoming protons into neutrons. These beamlines enable the irradiation of large power supplies, server systems, and a variety of other devices. 

Similarly, this set-up enables users to easily vary the amount of time the device spends in the beam in order to mimic the appropriate real-world conditions. At an airline cruising altitude of 12 kilometres, there are about 6000 neutrons per square centimetre per hour. However, at ground level in Vancouver or Halifax, the number would be about 12 to 15 neutrons per square centimetre per hour.