RF ion linacs for applied research and industrial applications

Abstract

The development of the radio-frequency quadrupole (RFQ) structure has made rf ion linacs practical for applications in research and industry requiring energetic ions. Since the RFQ can be designed to operate over a wide range of resonant frequencies, it can be used for a variety of accelerated ions, beam currents and output energies. This compact accelerator is simple to operate and can be used alone or with other structures to achieve even higher energy or lower momentum spread in the ion beam than is available from the RFQ alone. The inherent flexibility of the RFQ, together with its present commercial development worldwide, has resulted in its increased use for applications such as high energy ion implantation, isotope production, and neutron and gamma production for nondestructive examination and testing of materials. Potential applications that have been proposed for rf ion linacs include accelerator mass spectrometry, changed particle activation and heavy ion backscattering spectrometry. This paper will discuss these applications and describe several representative rf ion linac systems.