Technical approaches towards intense high charge state ion beam production with superconducting ECRIS

Abstract

Superconducting ECR ion source incorporated with the cutting edge techniques provides the ultimate conditions for highly charged ion beam production. In the last 12 years (since ICIS2005 in Caen, France), ECR ion source performance has got remarkable improvement, most of the typical ion beam intensity records have been renewed almost every year, with the great efforts in superconducting ECR ion source development. SECRAL and recently built SECRAL II ion sources are both high performance 3rd generation ECR ion sources developed at IMP. Technical advancement has obviously helped to boost the yield of high charge state ion beams. For instance, only 8.5 eμA Ar17+ has been produced in 2007 with SECRAL, and up to 130 eμA Ar17+ has been recently made with SECRAL II during a high microwave power test. Similar improvement also applies to many other highly charged heavy ion beams. These promising results owe to the continuous technical modification and optimization for dense hot plasma buildup, highly charged ion production, intense beam extraction and high efficiency transmission with reasonable beam quality. This paper will summarize the achievements made with both SECRAL and SECRAL II. The technical solutions to make very intense highly charged ion beams will be discussed and presented.