Investigation of helium ion production in constricted direct current plasma ion source with layered-glows.
Generation of helium ions is experimentally investigated with a constricted direct current (DC) plasma ion source operated at layered-glow mode, in which electrons could be accelerated through multiple potential structures so as to generate helium ions including He(2+) by successive ionization collisions in front of an extraction aperture. The helium discharge is sustained with the formation of a couple of stable layers and the plasma ball with high density is created near the extraction aperture at the operational pressure down to 0.6 Torr with concave cathodes. The ion beam current extracted with an extraction voltage of 5 kV is observed to be proportional to the discharge current and inversely proportional to the operating pressure, showing high current density of 130 mA/cm(2) and power density of 0.52 mA/cm(2)/W. He(2+) ions, which were predicted to be able to exist due to multiple-layer potential structure, are not observed. Simple calculation on production of He(2+) ions inside the plasma ball reveals that reduced operating pressure and increased cathode area will help to generate He(2+) ions with the layered-glow DC discharge.
The working principle of the hollow-anode plasma source
The hollow-anode discharge is a special form of glow discharge. It is shown that a drastically reduced anode area is responsible for a positive anode voltage drop of 30-40 V and an increased anode sheath thickness. This leads to ignition of a relatively dense plasma in front of the anode hole. Langmuir probe measurements inside a specially designed hollow anode plasma source give an electron density and temperature of ne=109-1011 cm-3 and Te=1-3 eV, respectively (nitrogen, current 100 mA, flow rate 5-50 scc min-1). Driven by a pressure gradient, the 'anode' plasma is blown through the anode hole and forms a bright plasma jet streaming with supersonic velocity (Mach number 1.2). The plasma-stream can be used, for instance, in plasma-assisted deposition of thin films.
The REX-ISOLDE project
The Radioactive Beam Experiment REX-ISOLDE [1–3] is a pilot experiment at ISOLDE (CERN) testing the new concept of post acceleration of radioactive ion beams by using charge breeding of the ions in a high charge state ion source and the efficient acceleration of the highly charged ions in a short LINAC using modern ion accelerator structures. In order to prepare the ions for the experiments singly charged radioactive ions from the on-line mass separator ISOLDE will be cooled and bunched in a Penning trap, charge bred in an electron beam ion source (EBIS) and finally accelerated in the LINAC. The LINAC consists of a radiofrequency quadrupole (RFQ) accelerator, which accelerates the ions up to 0.3 MeV/u, an interdigital H-type (IH) structure with a final energy between 1.1 and 1.2 MeV/u and three seven gap resonators, which allow the variation of the final energy. With an energy of the radioactive beams between 0.8 MeV/u and 2.2 MeV/u a wide range of experiments in the field of nuclear spectroscopy, astrophysics and solid state physics will be addressed by REX-ISOLDE.