About IBA•PIXE 2025

The International Conference on Ion Beam Analysis (IBA) takes place every second year since 1971 while the International Conference on Particle Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE), started in 1976, became a triennial conference from 1980 to 2013, and is since then a biennial one. Both conferences bring together people from academia, research centers and industry to exchange on new methods for quantitative material analysis using an ion beam, where they share their advances in developing new methods and analysis, in understanding fundamental phenomena, and in developing applications of the methods to answer questions on materials spanning from ancient art to modern technology. The PIXE conference focuses on the methods involving the detection of emitted X-rays while the IBA conference traditionally encompasses the series of techniques where, in general, the detected particle is an atom or the gamma ray from a nuclear reaction. While this means that the problems that can be addressed with the two range of techniques can be different, they are very complementary and share many common features. As a result, the two communities  started, over the last few meetings, to hold joint conferences.

2025 celebrates 50 years of the invention of one of those IBA techniques, the Elastic Recoil Detection (ERD), by two groups based in the Montréal area: Jacques L'Ecuyer, C. Brassard, C. Cardinal, J. Chabbal, L. Deschênes, and J. P. Labrie from the Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire at Universite de Montréal, and Bernard Terreault, J. G. Martel, and R. St.-Jacques from the INRS-Énergie in Varennes, Québec. The work was submitted for publication during the summer of 1975 and published on January 1st, 1976. It was then quickly picked up by other groups, especially at IBM  (J.F. Zeigler) and Sandia  (B. Doyle) and became one of the main methods of the IBA arsenal. A special session is organized for this occasion, and ERD is among the main themes of the IBA•PIXE 2025 conference.

Co-organized by five Canadian researchers, the 27th International Conference on Ion Beam Analysis and the 19th International Conference on Particle Induced X-ray Emission will be held jointly at Université de Montréal, from August 17th to 22nd, 2025.

The conference is  organized in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, a long-time partner of this conference series. Special support will be  given also to enhance the contributions  from the field of cultural heritage, thanks to the financial support  from France through the IAEA.

In addtion to ERD and cultural heritage, the conference will focus on in situ/in operando analysis, helium ion microscopy, geological and nuclear materials, but will not be limited to these and will also cover innovative contributions from fundamental aspects to applications of IBA and PIXE in general.

Posters are planned to be on display during the first two days of the conference in order to promote exchanges at other times than the poster session. Proceedings of IBA•PIXE 2025 should be published as a special virtual issue of  Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research section B, in the  tradition of both conferences.

The organizing committee is looking forward to welcoming you in Montréal in August 2025. We're confident that the scientific and social programme will be an optimal venue to promote prolific exchanges.