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Carbon Foil Beam Stripper
Carbon stripper foils are widely used in research accelerators as well as industrial applications. Over the last decade, Micromatter Carbon foils have been widely used in accelerators worldwide for beam stripping. We offer a wide variety of foils for beam stripping in terms of composition. thickness, flexibility and robustness. These include DLC(Diamond like carbon), DLC Hybrid and graphene foils.
With the introduction of diamond-like carbon foils more in 2008, Micromatter established a new generation of stripper foil products of unparalleled mechanical and physical properties. Further research and development led to the discovery of layered boron hybrid foils, and more recently, graphene based carbon films. Scientific institutions and isotope production facilities worldwide have come to rely on our carbon foil products because of their outstanding mechanical robustness and long lifetime in intense ion beams.
Customer Advisory on Boron Containing DLC Foils (‘Hybrid Foils’)
One of our competitors recently published content on their website advising against the use of boron
containing ‘hybrid’ foils. Their website presents that “[Company name] does not produce hybrid carbon
foils (i.e. boron) which introduce extra problems for radiation safety in laboratories”, citing their own
product information as a reference.
Furthermore, it is stated that “Pinholes are observed to form spontaneously in hybrid type boron-carbon
foils at temperatures above 1800 K, another reason why … [company name] does not offer hybrid foils.”
As far as Micromatter Technologies’ boron-DLC foils are concerned, these propositions are completely
unfounded.
Firstly, the competitor based his activation argument on untenable assumptions about the interaction of
stripper foils with low energy particle beams, such as those found in small medical cyclotrons, thus
arriving at erroneous conclusions.
In addition, performance results published by a Japanese laboratory for a small number of experimental
boron containing foils of different composition and microstructure were extended without justification
to all ‘hybrid’ films.
We wish to assure our customers that boron containing foils produced by Micromatter Technologies are
safe to use, and can be disposed of in the same manner as pure carbon foils. They are not susceptible to
unexpected pinhole formation because of our particular manufacturing technique that affords robust
nano-crystalline layered films of high temperature stability. Please see our detailed technical note here.
Micromatter is working with the competitor to resolve this issue of inaccurate information. In the
meantime, please feel free to contact us directly to discuss any concerns you may have, or to obtain
information on our pure diamond-like carbon or graphene foils.