Low energy metal ion source

Abstract

We report here on some preliminary investigations of the characteristics of a metal vapor vacuum arc ion source operating in a low voltage mode so as to produce high current beams of metal ions at low energy. The 10‐cm diameter, multiaperture beam formation electrodes were configured to an almost‐symmetric accel–decel potential arrangement, and in this preliminary work the accel voltage was limited to just 4 kV. We produced a pulsed titanium ion beam with current up to 100 mA at 1.5 kV net extractor voltage.