Review of industrial applications of electron accelerators

Abstract

Electron beam applications are based on different physical action principles: generation of strong local heating (electron beam treatment), Coulomb interaction with electrons in inorganic and organic materials generating molecular excitation and ionization (chemical processing) or defects (semiconductor treatment), and bremsstrahlung generation (materials inspection). Mainly for research applications (pulse radiolysis, free electron laser) pulsed electron accelerators are used. The wide field of electron beam applications is covered by four accelerator “families”: • - electron sources (30–150 keV) with internal scanned beam, • - single gap low-energy electron accelerators (100–300 keV), • - transformer- or Cockroft-Walton-type electron accelerators (300–4500 keV), • - electron linear accelerators (1–10 MeV). As application examples, the curing of coatings, electron beam degradation of chlorinated hydrocarbons in air and electron beam curing of fiber-reinforced composites are discussed in more detail.