A Vacuum Arc Ion Source for Heavy Ion Fusion Applications

A Vacuum Arc Ion Source for Heavy Ion Fusion Applications DOE Grant No. DE-FG03-98ER86071 Amount: $100,000 Small Business Alameda Applied Sciences Corp. 2235 Polvorosa Avenue Suite 230 San Leandro, CA 94577-2249 Dr. Niansheng Qi, Principal Investigator Dr. Mahadevan Krishnan, Business Official (510) 483-4156 Research Institution Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Sponsored Projects Office M/S 936B-223 Berkeley, CA 84720 Thermionic ion sources have been the workhorse for the DOE heavy ion fusion (HIF) program but suffer from slow turn-on, heating problems for large areas and are limited to low ionization potential elements. Gas injection sources suffer from deleterious neutral gas effects. In order to overcome these limitations, this project will develop a high current vacuum arc ion source for HIF and other commercial applications. Prior attempts to develop a vacuum arc ion source were not embraced by the HIF community because the beam current fluctuations were too high and the reproducibility was poor. In previous research, it was demonstrated that a properly designed vacuum arc source could overcome these limitations. Phase I will modify the previously developed Gd ion source to increase the beam current from 0.12A to 0.5A. The following conditions will also be demonstrated: beam current noise =1%; beam uniformity =5%; pulse-pulse variation =1%. Lastly, and attempt will be made to tailor the discharge to produce beams with =95% ions in a single charge state and optimize the beam emittance to =0.4p-mm-mrad at =0.5A beam current. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The primary application should be an ion source for use within the DOE research community. The source could also find use in other fields in research and industry, for example as a source for materials surface characterization, for space propulsion, for experimental research in atomic physics, and in the nuclear physics community._