An Audio Interview with Dr. Morgan Dehnel, Selkirk College’s Ion-Source Research Chair
In this post Nelson Co-op Radio hosts Deb Kozak and Mike Funergy interview, Dr. Morgan Dehnel, Selkirk College’s Ion Source Research Chair, who leads the Selkirk Ion-source Research Centre (SIRC) housed in the Selkirk Technology Access Centre (STAC). The SIRC is a collaboration of Selkirk College, TRIUMF, UVic Department of Physics & Astronomy, U.Sask. Department of Physics and Engineering Physics and companies like D-Pace, Silvaco, Busch Vacuum etc..
Please see the link below for the audio interview. Following the link is a synopsis of the paraphrased questions, along with the first few words of Dr. Dehnel’s answer:
Question 1 (00:53): So I understand that Minister Gregor Robertson was just here to announce funding for this new school. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Yes, there is significant funding, more than a million dollars to the Selkirk Technology Access Center…
Question 2 (03:26) Well, turning to what your role is in this, can you tell people – what is ion source research? Can you simplify that a little bit for me?
Okay, so I will back up a little bit just to describe particle accelerators. So, these are charged particles, could be protons, electrons or ions…
Question 3 (09:51) I get the sense this is the type of research that you may have a goal, but what the end result ends up being used for might be something totally different. What’s the intent? Why are you using different materials at different times? And what’s the advantage of certain elements to ionize over others?
There are 14 different (market) segments that use particle accelerators, like carbon dating etc. and there are other ones, but two big ones…I’ll just stick with the semiconductor industry and the medical…
Question 4 (12:03) [There are] students that are perhaps coming to work at Selkirk?
Yes, we have an umbrella MITACS grant with which we can get up to, 12 students to work on PhDs, Masters and then also technologists to work with them…
Question 5 (12:41) And then these students will be studying here and then they can go on to, like they’re coming from different universities?
Yeah. So basically what we do is we partner, I primarily partner with UVic and USask on this. So the students will do their coursework there … and then they come to SIRC to do their experiments …
Question 6 (13:30) And you’re kind of a pioneer in this field with the startup because you did D-Pace years ago?
Right. So that’s the other thing, a lot of people will say “Oh, that’s not going to happen”. Well, I know it’s happened …
Question 7 (14:23) You said that you were doing jigs for some component manufacturer. Is there another besides the medical field?
Well, okay, so computer chips, that’s another one…
Question 8 (16:15) Is it easy to plug one element in for another? Well, today we’re going to try boron?
Say, okay, today we’re going to try nitrogen beams. So we put that (Nitrogen gas) into our ion source and there are reasons, you read the literature and what not and go, okay, this technology should be pretty good at producing Nitrogen ions …
Question 9 (17:12) Before we let you go. You have a conference coming up this fall?
So as part of being the Selkirk Ion Source Research Chair, I applied to host the Negative Ion Beams and Sources symposium. We’re hosting NIBS2026 in September…
It was a lot of fun to be interviewed by Deb Kozak and Mike Funergy! I was grateful for the opportunity.
