LANSCE Capabilities

Material Science

The Lujan Center beam production operations are fully funded by NNSA programmatic sponsors. Lujan Center capabilities available for this call are: SMARTS and HIPPO diffractometers, Flight Path 5 for neutron radiography/tomography, and the Asterix neutron reflectometer and phase contrast imaging capability. NPDF may be run in development mode.

As LANSCE is a NSUF (Nuclear Science User Facilities) partner facility, beam time may be requested for DOE/NE-related work that will be contingent on a successful NSUF funding proposal as an alternate path to the normal proposal process. 

Lujan Center areas of research include the following:

• Microstructural evolution, including texture, phase composition, and dislocations, at ambient and non-ambient conditions (load, temperature, pressure etc.)
• Residual and induced stress, phase transformations
• In-situ phase transformations under P, T, H
• Surface and interfacial structure of materials
• Oxidation and hydriding phenomena at interfaces
• Neutron radiography and tomography, including energy-resolved neutron tomography for isotope mapping and phase contrast imaging
• All materials relevant to NNSA and DOE/NE work can be handled at the Lujan Center, including but not limited to actinides (uranium, Pu etc.), high explosives, and radioactive materials

Nuclear Science

The WNR facility and the Lujan Center provide neutron and proton beams and can supply detector arrays for basic, applied, and defense-related research, depending on experimental requirements. Neutron beams with energies ranging from about 0.1 MeV to more than 600 MeV are produced at WNR from Target 4 (an unmoderated tungsten spallation source) using the 800 MeV proton beam from the LANSCE Linac. In the Target-2 area (Blue Room), samples can be exposed to the direct proton beam with energies up to 800 MeV. At Target 1 (Lujan Center), cold to epithermal neutrons (0.2 meV – 500 keV) are produced.

Radiation Effects

The Radiation Effects User Program strives to provide world-class facilities and cutting-edge research. 

The LANSCE accelerator has several experimental facilities that can be used for wide ranging radiation effects research. This includes radiation effects on semiconductor electronics, materials, and biological systems.  The facilities listed below are each optimized for a particular particle and energy range. Figure 1 shows the location of these facilities. Learn more about the WNR experimental flight paths.

The facility has been used for more than a decade by many semiconductor users from Industry, Universities and laboratories to simulate the potential failures posed by cosmic-ray-induced neutrons upon semiconductor electronic devices. These  chips control aircraft, self-driving cars, data centers and every-day appliances. The shape of the neutron spectra on the 30o flight paths at the Weapons Neutron Research (WNR) facility at LANSCE are very similar to the neutron spectrum produced in the atmosphere by cosmic rays but with a neutron flux of over a million times higher. This large flux allows testing of semiconductor devices at greatly accelerated rates. There are two flight paths devoted to neutron radiation effects testing: ICE-I and ICE-II. ICE-I is located at 30o to the left of the proton beam and ICE-II is located at 30o to the right of the proton beam.  Both provide a cosmic-ray like neutron spectrum.

A more detailed discussion of neutron radiation effects testing at the ICE House is in following web pages and in the Radiation Effects and Electronics Testing Handbook.