Essential technologies for achieving high performances in superconducting RF cavities are reviewed. After fundamental understandings of superconducting RF cavities, many interesting technical experiences obtained in the initial R&D phase of 1.3 GHz single-cell cavities for high gradient applications are introduced.

Three Super-Heavy nuclei (Z=113), which were synthesized from 2004 to 2012 by the RIKEN group led by Dr. K. Morita, were internationally recognized as a new element on the periodic table in December 2015, and the right to name the element was given to the group. This result could be done not only by the efficient experimental device, GARIS, but also by the very powerful heavy-ion accelerator, RILAC, which provided an intense 5.5 MeV/u ⁷⁰Zn beam to GARIS. The improved RILAC could drive this Super-Heavy element (Z=113) discovery as long as a net duration of 575 days, and, finally, deliver a total dose of 1.4×10²⁰ particles of ⁷⁰Zn on the ²⁰⁹Bi target, until the three events were detected.

The Aichi Synchrotron Radiation Center (AichiSR) was designed mainly for industrial use and entered public service on March 26, 2013. The 1.2 GeV storage ring works with 300 mA top-up operation mode since open for public use. In this paper, the performance of accelerators and present status of public use, especially industrial one are reported.

Silicon carbide (SiC) is the promising material for next power electronics technology used in the field such as HEV, EV, and railway, electric power infrastructure. SiC enables power devices with low loss to easily operate in an ultrahigh-voltage region because of the high breakdown electric field of SiC. In this paper, we report static and dynamic electric performances of 3300 V class SiC SBDs, IE-MOSFETs, >10 kV PiN diodes and IE-IGBTs. Especially, the electrical characteristics of IE-IGBT with the blocking voltage of 16.5 kV indicate the sufficient ability to convert the thyratron in high power RF system of an accelerator.

The beam intensity of highly charged heavy ions from the electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion source has been rapidly increased in the last three decades. Especially, in the last decade, the performance of the ECR ion source was dramatically improved to meet the requirements for the super-heavy element search experiment and the intense radio isotope beam production. At RIKEN, we constructed several high performance ECR ion sources for those projects. Furthermore, to improve the performance, we studied the effect of the key elements of the ion source on the beam intensity and the plasma. In this article, I describe the brief history of the ion source development and the performance of the ion sources at RIKEN.