Facilities & Experiments

One of the world’s largest cyclotrons, the 520 MeV accelerates negative hydrogen ions to 75% the speed of light to produce intense proton beams for rare isotope production and a variety of other particle physics applications.

The world’s highest power e-linac for rare isotope production, the e-linac accelerates a beam of electrons to 99.99% of the speed of light and steers them to hit an isotope production target about 100 m away. 

In the ISAC-I facility, rare isotope beams can be accelerated using a combination of a radiofrequency quadrupole (RFQ) and a drift tube linac (DTL). These post-accelerated beams add to the toolbox for researchers investigating atomic nuclei, supernova explosions, and more.

At the βNMR (beta-detected Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) facility, scientists are using radioactive isotopes to take inside-out, atomic-level snapshots to guide the way to new materials and medicines.

At the βNMR (beta-detected Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) facility, scientists are using radioactive isotopes to take inside-out, atomic-level snapshots to guide the way to new materials and medicines.

DRAGON (Detector of Recoils And Gammas of Nuclear Reactions) is a world unique facility which is giving astronomers a clearer view of our stardust origins by simulating the rapid nuclear reactions that take place in exploding stars. 

Using rare francium atoms to capture an ultra-precise fingerprint of atomic weak force symmetry breaking and potential beyond-Standard Model physics.

GRIFFIN (Gamma Ray Infrastructure For Fundamental Investigations of Nuclei) is the world’s most powerful tool for the decay spectroscopy of rare isotopes, and it is giving scientists an unparalleled view of the forces that create nuclear structure. 

TITAN, TRIUMF’s Ion Trap for Atomic and Nuclear science, is one of the world’s fastest and most precise tools for measuring the mass of a single atom, and the only facility able to do so with highly charged, rare isotopes.  

GRIFFIN (Gamma Ray Infrastructure For Fundamental Investigations of Nuclei) is the world’s most powerful tool for the decay spectroscopy of rare isotopes, and it is giving scientists an unparalleled view of the forces that create nuclear structure. 

With TUDA, TRIUMF scientists and international collaborators are making critical insights into key stellar element formation pathways that can only be experimentally studied using accelerated rare isotopes. 

DESCANT (the Deuterated Scintillator Array for Neutron Tagging) is a neutron detector custom-designed to provide neutron data in conjunction with the TIGRESS and GRIFFIN gamma ray spectroscopy analysis of nuclear structure. 

With EMMA (the Electromagnetic Mass Analyzer), TRIUMF scientists are creating exotic nuclei, many never before studied precisely in a laboratory, to provide insights into nuclear structure  and the origin of the elements formed in powerful stellar explosions. 

TRIUMF’s IRIS (ISAC Charged Particle Reaction Spectroscopy Station) experimental facility is giving physicists a unique view of the strong force and unusual transformations in nuclear structure when nuclei are pushed to the extreme. 

With TIGRESS (TRIUMF-ISAC Gamma Ray Suppressed Spectrometer), an in-beam gamma ray spectrometer, TRIUMF scientists are opening a new era of high-precision nuclear structure experiments with rare isotopes. 

The Applied Technology Group team steward two on-site cyclotrons and work in partnership with collaborator BWXT Medical to produce nearly 2 million patient-doses of critically-needed medical isotopes for diagnostic scans and cutting-edge research. 

TRIUMF’s most compact cyclotron has played a central role in the development of the University of British Columbia‘s world-class positron emission tomography (PET) clinical research program, and in the development of the BC Cancer’s use of medical isotopes in clinical programs. 

The TR-24 is a medium energy (15-24 MeV) cyclotron that operates with gas, liquid and solid targets. It’s optimized for producing a wide range and significant quantities clinical and research radioisotopes.

The Radiochemistry Research Labs are where radionuclides are extracted, purified, and combined with peptide or antibodies to make radiotracers that can help visualize and diagnose diseases like cancer or Alzheimer’s.

The Radiobiology Lab expands on TRIUMF’s decades-long track record of success in synthesizing radiopharmaceuticals (tracers), bringing online a fully functional tissue culture lab where novel radiopharmaceuticals can be evaluated from their initial design to receptor-binding assays.

In the Target Design and Manufacturing lab, researchers use materials like gold, calcium, barium, and other substances to create targets which, upon irradiation from a beam from a cyclotron, can create the isotopes required to make radionuclides.