AP/IE-04 Application of Nuclear Microprobe in Biomedical, Industrial and Fusion Research

Nuclear microprobe at 2 MV Tandetron accelerator of Jozef Stefan Institute (JSI) was constructed in the year 2000 with the support of IAEA Technical Cooperation Project SLO/1/004. The measuring station is equipped with instrumentation for micro-Proton-Induced-X-ray-Emission (micro-PIXE), micro-Elastic Recoil Detection Analysis (micro-ERDA), micro-Nuclear Reaction Analysis (micro-NRA), Proton Beam Writing (PBW) and confocal PIXE. Micro-PIXE elemental mapping in biomedical research has been established as routine analytical method at JSI tandetron laboratory for collaborators from biomedical fields. Research results from the last two years include, among others, elemental distribution in the leaves and seed of Cd/Zn hyperaccumulating plant Thlaspi Praecox grown in heavy-metal polluted area, leaves of halophyte plants, elemental distribution of buckwheat seed, elemental contents of wood, lichen arsenate uptake etc. From analytical point of view, some results of elemental mapping measured at an interesting example of brain tissue of mercury miner sampled for pathological depot over a decade ago and recently retrieved for Hg/Se analysis will be presented. On the other hand, the intensifying research associated with the construction of the future thermonuclear reactor ITER is expressing in the development of the techniques for detection of hydrogen isotopes in the tokamak wall materials. Hydrogen microdistribution in the exposed tokamak wall materials are measured by micro-ERDA using focused 3 MeV 7Li beam. Post-mortem micro-ERDA analyses of tokamak plasma-exposed surfaces were combined with simultaneous X-ray emission to understand erosion-redeposition processes in the tokamak walls. Micro-ERDA has been also recently used for determination of hydrogen concentrations in titanium alloys for industrial customers. In addition, micro-NRA for deuterium mapping has been established with 3He beam using nuclear reaction D(3He,p)4He. Carbon fiber composites, the candidate materials for the ITER divertor, were exposed to the deuterium plasma inside tokamak Textor. Deuterium penetration depth was then determined by micro-NRA.