Dust Accelerator Overview

The dust accelerator facility allows the acceleration of micrometer sized electrically conductive grains to speeds between 1 and 100 km/s. Single grains can be selected and their impact onto a target or experiment can be studied. The facility operates with a chemical clean vacuum (no oil diffusion pumps) below 10-4 Pa (10-6 mbar) in order to allow a careful chemical analysis of target and/or projectile materials. During the projectile impact a crater and an impact plasma is generated which can be studied.

Crater studies of a dust impact crater by the Univ. Uppsala (STM image)