RADNEXT is an EU-funded network of irradiation facilities and radiation effects experts aimed at increasing the quantity and quality of user access to accelerator infrastructure, and improving the diversity and harmonization across facilities. Along with the beam provision to worldwide radiation effects users, RADNEXT has an ambitious research program oriented at improving radiation effects testing, of which an example of a heavy ion facility inter-comparison at very different energy regimes is included in this work. In particular, energy deposition distributions in a silicon solid-state detector and the Single Event Upset (SEU) and Multiple Cell Upset (MCU) behaviour are compared amongst heavy ion beams of similar LET, but very different energies (i.e., from the more classical ~10 MeV/u regime up to several hundreds of MeV/u).

Proton direct ionization (PDI) from low-energy protons has been shown to have a potentially significant impact on the accuracy of prediction methods used to calculate the upset rates (URs) of memory devices in space applications for state-of-the-art deep submicron technologies. The general approach nowadays is to consider a safety margin to apply over the UR computed from high-energy proton and heavy-ion experimental data. The data reported here present a challenge to this approach. Different UR prediction methods are used and compared in order to establish the impact of PDI on the total UR. Regardless of the method employed, the findings suggest that PDI can contribute to up to 90% of the total UR, on average, for a general selection of space orbits, with peaks of up to 99%. Such results suggest that an approach based on the characterization of the low-energy portion of the proton spectrum would be more convenient for similar technologies than the application of a general safety margin. Based on data presented here, the previously proposed margin of 5 is exceeded, by large amounts in some cases.

Neutrons with energies between 0.1 and 10 MeV can significantly impact the soft error rate (SER) in SRAMs manufactured in scaled technologies, with respect to high-energy neutrons. Their contribution is evaluated in accelerator, ground-level, and avionic (12 km of altitude) environments. Experimental cross sections were measured with monoenergetic neutrons from 144 keV to 17 MeV, and the results benchmarked with Monte Carlo simulations. It was found that even 144 keV neutrons can induce upsets due to elastic scattering. Moreover, neutrons in the 0.1-10 MeV energy range can induce more than 60% of the overall upset rate in accelerator applications, while their contribution can exceed 18% in avionics. The SER due to neutrons below 3 MeV, whose contribution has always been considered negligible, is found to be up to 44% of the total upsets in accelerator environments. These results have strong radiation hardness assurance (RHA) implications for those environments with high fluxes of neutrons in the 0.1-10 MeV energy range.

A single-event effect (SEE) simulation toolkit has been developed at CERN for the whole radiation effects community and released as an open-source code. It has been validated by comparing the simulated energy deposition of inelastic interactions, due to monoenergetic neutrons in the 1.2–17 MeV energy range, to the distribution measured experimentally by a silicon diode detector.

A new parasitic, mixed-field, neutron-dominated irradiation station has been recently commissioned at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN). The station is installed within the neutron time-of-flight (n_TOF) facility, taking advantage of the secondary radiation produced by the neutron spallation target, with neutrons ranging from 0.025 eV to several hundreds of MeV. The new station allows radiation damage studies to be performed in irradiation conditions that are closer to the ones encountered during the operation of particle accelerators; the irradiation tests carried out in the station will be complementary to the standard tests on materials, usually performed with gamma sources. Samples will be exposed to neutron-dominated doses in the MGy range per year, with minimal impact on the n_TOF facility operation. The station has 24 irradiation positions, each hosting up to $100{\mathrm{cm}}^3$ of sample material. In view of its proximity to the n_TOF target, inside protective shielding, the irradiation station and its operating procedures have been carefully developed taking into account the safety of personnel and to avoid any unwanted impact on the operation of the n_TOF facility and experiments. Due to the residual radioactivity of the whole area around the n_TOF target and of the irradiated samples, access to the irradiation station is forbidden to human operators even when the n_TOF facility is not in operation. Robots are used for the remote installation and retrieval of the samples, and other optimizations of the handling procedures were developed in compliance with radiation protection regulations and the aim of minimizing doses to personnel. The sample containers were designed to be radiation tolerant, compatible with remote handling, and subject to detailed risk analysis and testing during their development. The whole life cycle of the irradiated materials, including their post-irradiation examinations and final disposal, was considered and optimized.

The paper summarizes the main results related to the Single Event Upset (SEU) and Single Event Latch-up (SEL SRAM) cross section measurements performed at CHARM (Cern High energy AcceleRator Mixed-field facility) in a location with a strong contribution from thermal and intermediate energy neutrons. We introduce a new experimental procedure to unfold the thermal and high-energy hadron contributions to the Single Event Effect (SEE) rate in the mixed-field environment and benchmark the result against those obtained in standard test facilities, highlighting the possible implications on state-of-the-art component qualification.