Criticality in the fabrication of ion extraction system for SST-1 neutral beam injector

For the heating of plasma in steady-state superconducting tokamak (SST-1) (Y.C. Saxena, SST-1 Team, Present status of the SST-1 project, Nucl. Fusion 40 (2000) 1069–1082; D. Bora, SST-1 Team, Test results on systems developed for the SST-1 tokamak, Nucl. Fusion 43 (2003) 1748–1758), a neutral beam injector is provided to raise the ion temperature to 1 keV. This injector has a capability of injecting hydrogen beam with the power of 0.5 MW at 30 keV. For the upgrade of SST-1, power of 1.7 MW at 55 KeV is required. Further, beam power is to be provided for a pulse length of 1000S. We have designed a neutral beam injector (S.K. Mattoo, A.K. Chakraborty, U.K. Baruah, P.K. Jayakumar, M. Bandyopadhyay, N. Bisai, Ch. Chakrapani, M.R. Jana, R. Onali, V. Prahlad, P.J. Patel, G.B. Patel, B. Prajapati, N.V.M. Rao, S. Rambabu, C. Rotti, S.K. Sharma, S. Shah, V. Sharma, M.J. Singh, Engineering design of the steady-state neutral beam injector for SST-1, Fusion Eng. Des. 56 (2001) 685–691; A.K. Chakraborty, N. Bisai, M.R. Jana, P.K. Jayakumar, U.K. Baruah, P.J. Patel, K. Rajasekar, S.K. Mattoo, Neutral beam injector for steady-state superconducting tokamak, Fusion Technol. (1996) 657–660; P.K. Jayakumar, M.R. Jana, N. Bisai, M. Bajpai, N.P. Singh, U.K. Baruah, A.K. Chakraborty, M. Bandyopadhyay, C. Chrakrapani, D. Patel, G.B. Patel, P. Patel, V. Prahlad, N.V.M. Rao, C. Rotti, V. Sreedhar, S.K. Mattoo, Engineering issues of a 1000S neutral beam ion source, Fusion Technol. 1 (1998) 419–422) satisfying the requirements for both SST-1 and its upgrade. Since intense power is to be transported to SST-1 situated at a distance of several meters from the ion source, the optical quality of the beam becomes a primary concern. This in turn, is determined by the uniformity of the ion source plasma and the extractor geometry. To obtain the desired optical quality of the beam, stringent tolerances are to be met during the fabrication of ion extractor system.

SST-1 neutral beam injector is based on positive ion source. The extraction system consists of three grids, each having extraction area of (width) 230 mm × (height) 480 mm and 774-shaped apertures of 8-mm diameter. To obtain horizontal focal length of 5.4 m and vertical of 7 m, each grid consists of two halves with 387 apertures. Two halves are inclined at an angle of 1.07 ± 0.01°. For long pulse operation, active water cooling is provided by in-laid down of dense network of 22 wavy semicircular (r = 1.1 ± 0.05 mm) cooling channels in the space available between the apertures. The required flatness of the copper plate is 100 μm and positioning tolerance of aperture is ±60 μm. The measurement obtained after fabrication is compared with the specifications. It is pointed out that fabrication within set tolerance limit could be achieved only through process of fabrication and high-resolution measurements.     

Design and Development of a Power Supply System for NBI Test Stand of EAST

A neutral beam injector (NBI) test stand was constructed to develop a multi-megawatt prototype ion source as an auxiliary heating system on experimental advanced superconducting tokamak. A power supply system for the NBI test stand components such as a set of dc power supplies for plasma generator, a dc high voltage power supply of a tetrode accelerator, a transmission line and a surge energy suppressor. Stable arc discharges of the plasma generator with hydrogen gases for 100 s long pulse have been produced by six Langmuir probes feedback loop regulation mode to control the arc power supply. The 4 MW hydrogen ion beam of 1 s is extracted with beam energy of 80 keV and the beam current of 52 A. The dc high voltage power supply for the plasma grid of the prototype ion source was designed to contribute maximum voltage of 100 kV and current of 100 A. The high voltage power output is continuously adjustable to satisfy with plasma physics experiment in operation frequency of 10 Hz. To prevent damage of the beam source at high voltage breakdown, core snubber using deltamax soft magnetic materials have been adopted to satisfy the input energy into the accelerator from the power supply can be reduced to about 5 J in the case of breakdown at 80 kV. For the transmission line, a disc shape multi cable coaxial configuration was adopted and which the dimension of the diameter is 140 mm at the core snubber. The major issues of discharge characteristics with long pulse and beam extraction with high power for the prototype ion source were investigated on the NBI test stand.     

Cu and Y ion beams by a new LIS generator

In this work, we present the experimental results of a laser ion source (LIS) implemented for ion accelerators. A KrF excimer laser beam operating at 248 nm was focused on a solid target mounted inside a vacuum chamber in order to obtain the plasma. The laser energy was fixed at 11.5 mJ/pulse. The ion components of the plasma were extracted and accelerated up to 160 keV per charge state by a double gap system formed in two different stages. The beam cross section was circular, 1.5 cm in diameter. Using Cu and Y disks, as laser targets, we produced ion beams containing 1.2 × 10¹¹ ions/pulse (0.7 × 10¹¹ ions/cm²). Applying a total accelerating voltage of 60 kV we obtained an increase in ion dose up to 3.4 × 10¹¹ ions/pulse, (2 × 10¹¹ ions/cm²) for the Cu target and up to 6.3 × 10¹¹ ions/pulse (3.5 × 10¹¹ ions/cm²) for the Y target. The characterization of the plasma was performed using a Faraday cup for the electromagnetic properties, and a pepper pot system for the geometric ones. At 60 kV accelerating voltage and 5.5 mA output current the normalized beam emittance resulted in 0.22 π mm mrad for the Cu target, while under the same accelerating voltage, but with 7.4 mA output current, the normalized beam emittance resulted in 0.14 π mm mrad for the Y target.     

Design of a compact focusing lens system with short acceleration tube at 300 kV

A compact focusing lens system with high demagnification over 1500 was designed to form an ion nanobeam with 346 keV energy by adding a short distance acceleration tube for beam acceleration and focusing downstream of the existing double acceleration lens system. The demagnification, focusing points and aberrations of the acceleration tube were studied using beam trajectory calculation. The acceleration tube was designed to have a length of 140 mm and a demagnification of 2 at its acceleration tube voltage of 300 kV, which resulted in a new compact focusing lens system with a total length of about 640 mm. In addition, the maximum voltage and electric-field of the acceleration tube were confirmed experimentally on the built device to be 300 kV and 30 kV/cm, respectively. The final beam size formed by the system was estimated to be 130 nm in diameter using the design parameters. The result suggests that an ion nanobeam of 346 keV can be formed by an apparatus having the reasonable length of 2 m, which permits us to develop a system for 1 MV by elongating its tube length.     

Development of laser ion source for heavy ion applications

We have been developing a high-performance laser ion source (LIS) for practical applications since 2009. Ideally, the LIS should generate a carbon beam with a peak current of 20 mA and a pulse duration of over 1 μs. We selected a Nd:YAG laser with a Gaussian-coupled resonator as the laser source based on our experience of generating high-charge-state ion beams. This laser can produce fundamental pulses with a power of 650 mJ and durations of about 6 ns. The graphite target used is 10 cm high and 10 cm in diameter, as it can be irradiated with up to 10⁵ laser shots. The maximum extraction voltage was designed to be 50 kV. We have already finished designing the LIS and we commenced fabrication. We intend to measure the source performance by performing plasma and beam tests up to the end of March 2011.     

Laser photodetachment neutraliser for negative ion beams

We outline a speculative design for a photodetachment neutraliser for a negative ion neutral beam system, with neutralisation efficiency of 95% or more. The practical difficulties are enormous. The ion beam must pass through an optical cavity capable of reflecting the light many times. For 500 reflections, the laser optical power output ∼800 kW, giving circulating power ∼400 MW. All sources of light loss combined need to be kept to 0.2% or less per pass. The losses due to photodetachment itself, and due to Thomson scattering in the beam plasma are negligible. A key task is to maintain the reflectance of the mirrors above 99.97% for long periods of operation, protecting all the components from thermal and neutron damage, and from caesium, sputtered atoms and other contamination. A diode-pumped Nd-doped YAG laser can have overall electrical-to-light (“wall-plug”) efficiency up to 25%. A DEMO concept reactor such as the EU Power Plant Conceptual Study (PPCS) Model B requires 270 MW heating power. If this is all provided by neutral beams, then a laser neutraliser might reduce the electrical power consumption for this from 900 MW to 520 MW.     

RADI—A RF source size-scaling experiment towards the ITER neutral beam negative ion source

IPP Garching is currently developing a negative hydrogen ion RF source for the ITER neutral beam system. The source demonstrated already current densities in excess of the ITER requirements (>200 A/m² D⁻) at the required source pressure and electron/ion ratio, but with only small extraction area and limited pulse length. A new test facility (RADI) went recently into operation for the demonstration of the required (plasma) homogeneity of a large RF source and the modular driver concept.The source with the dimension of 0.8 m × 0.76 m has roughly the width and half the height of the ITER source; its modular driver concept will allow an easy extrapolation in only one direction to the full size ITER source. The RF power supply consists of two 180 kW, 1 MHz RF generators capable of 30 s pulses. A dummy grid matches the conductance of the ITER source. Full size extraction is presently not possible due to the lack of an insulator, a large size extraction system and a beam dump.The main parameters determining the performance of this “half-size” source are the negative ion and electron density in front of the grid as well as the homogeneity of their profiles across the grid. Those will be measured by optical emission and cavity ring down spectroscopy, by Langmuir probes and laser detachment. These methods have been calibrated to the extracted current densities achieved at the smaller source test facilities at IPP for similar source parameters. However, in order to get some information about the possible ion and electron currents, local single aperture extraction with a Faraday cup system is planned.     

Computer investigation of ion beam optics for a Freeman type ion source system

The present work investigates the computer analysis of the ion beam properties produced by a Freeman type system. The extraction for such system is composed of four electrodes that permit to keep a fixed output energy by means of two accelerating gaps and one decelerating gap. The latter allows reducing the beam divergence angle. The combination of the acceleration/deceleration sections provides to keep a low beam emittance at the source outlet. The simulation of single charged argon ion trajectories for a plasma concave of curvature 4 mm was first studied with and without space charge effect using acceleration/deceleration extraction system with the aid of the SIMION computer program. The voltage applied to the accelerating electrode was optimized to accomplish the suitable ion trajectories without hitting the extraction electrode. Then, two additional studies were performed: the influence of the acceleration voltage and extraction voltage on the beam emittance and beam diameter; and the effect of the extraction gap width (distance between the plasma emission surface and the acceleration electrode) on the shape of the ion beam envelope and the position of the ion beam waist. Last, the influence of the space charge on the ion beam envelope was also investigated.     

Versatile plasma ion source with an internal evaporator

A novel construction of an ion source with an evaporator placed inside a plasma chamber is presented. The crucible is heated to high temperatures directly by arc discharge, which makes the ion source suitable for substances with high melting points. The compact ion source enables production of intense ion beams for wide spectrum of solid elements with typical separated beam currents of ∼100-150 μA for Al⁺, Mn⁺, As⁺ (which corresponds to emission current densities of 15-25 mA/cm²) for the extraction voltage of 25 kV. The ion source works for approximately 50-70 h at 100% duty cycle, which enables high ion dose implantation. The typical power consumption of the ion source is 350-400 W. The paper presents detailed experimental data (e.g. dependences of ion currents and anode voltages on discharge and filament currents and magnetic flux densities) for Cr, Fe, Al, As, Mn and In. The discussion is supported by results of Monte Carlo method based numerical simulation of ionisation in the ion source.     

A high charge state all-permanent magnet ECR ion source for the IMP 320 kV HV platform

A 320 kV high voltage (HV) platform has been constructed at Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) to satisfy the increasing requirements of experimental studies in some heavy ion associated directions. A high charge state all-permanent magnet ECRIS-LAPECR2 has been designed and fabricated to provide intense multiple charge state ion beams (such as 1000 eμA O⁶⁺, 16.7 eμA Ar¹⁴⁺, 24 eμA Xe²⁷⁺, etc.) for the HV platform. LAPECR2 has a dimension of ∅ 650 mm × 560 mm. The powerful 3D magnetic confinement to the ECR plasma and the optimum designed magnetic field for the operation at 14.5 GHz makes it possible to obtain very good performances from this source. After a brief introduction of the ECRIS and accelerator development at IMP, the conceptual design of LAPECR2 source is presented. The first test results of this all-permanent magnet ECRIS are given in this paper.     

The development of data acquisition and control system for extraction power supply of prototype RF ion source

A 16 kV/20 A power supply was developed for the extraction grid of prototype radio frequency (RF) ion source of neutral beam injector.To acquire the state signals of extraction grid power supply (EGPS) and control the operation of the EGPS,a data acquisition and control system has been developed.This system mainly consists of interlock protection circuit board,photoelectric conversion circuit,optical fibers,industrial compact peripheral component interconnect (CPCI) computer and host computer.The human machine interface of host computer delivers commands and data to program of the CPCI computer,as well as offers a convenient client for setting parameters and displaying EGPS status.The CPCI computer acquires the status of the power supply.The system can turn-off the EGPS quickly when the faults of EGPS occur.The system has been applied to the EGPS of prototype RF ion source.Test results show that the data acquisition and control system for the EGPS can meet the requirements of the operation of prototype RF ion source.     

Progress of the RF negative hydrogen ion source for fusion at HUST

Huazhong University of Science and Technology has developed an experimental setup of a radio frequency (RF) driven negative hydrogen ion source, to investigate the physics of production and extraction of the H− ions for neutral beam injection in nuclear fusion reactors. The main design parameters of the ion source are: RF power ≤40 kW; extraction voltage ≤10 kV; accelerator voltage ≤20 kV. This paper gives an overview of the progress of the ion source with particular emphasis on some issues. The RF driver and source plasma are analyzed and optimized in terms of impedance matching, plasma characteristics and power coupling. In regard to the simulation analysis, a plasma model based on the particle-in-cell method and a beam trajectory model considering beam stripping loss are developed to investigate the plasma and negative ions transport inside the ion source. Furthermore, a collisional radiative model of H and H2 is built for plasma optical diagnosis.     

Measurement of beam power and profile for DNB on HT-7 tokamak

In normal experimental operation, a diagnostic neutral beam (DNB) can produce 6 A of extracted beam current in hydrogen at an energy of 49 keV with a pulse length of 100 ms. Hydrogen and deuterium beams can be produced as well. The diagnostic neutral beam has been added to the diagnostic set so that charge-exchange recombination spectroscopy (CXRS) can be used to acquire ion temperature and rotation. The beam power and beam profile distribution of the DNB injection can be obtained with a thermocouple probe measurement system on the HT-7 superconducting tokamak. The thermocouple probe measurement system with 13 thermocouples crossly distributed on the probe plate was used to measure the temperature rise of each coppery target, so the profile distribution of the ion/neutral beam was obtained by calculation. In this paper, the structure of the probe plate on the DNB for HT-7 tokamak and some measurement results are presented.     

Si nanocrystals formation by a new ion implantation device

Metallic and non-metallic ion beams can be used to modify the properties of wafer surfaces if accelerated at moderate energies. We developed a new “implantation machine” able to generate ions and to accelerate them up to 80 kV. The ion generation is achieved by a laser-plasma source which creates plasma in expansion. The device consists of a KrF excimer laser and a generating vacuum chamber made of stainless steel. The laser energy was 45 mJ/pulse with a power density of 2.25 × 10⁸ W/cm². The target was kept to positive voltage to accelerate the produced ions. The ion dose was estimated by a fast polarised Faraday cup. This machine was utilised to try synthesizing silicon nanocrystals in SiO₂ matrix. Preliminary results of Si nanocrystals formation and the glancing-angle X-ray diffraction analyses are reported.     

EAST强流离子源电源系统的初步测试运行

测试NBI大功率强流离子源的综合测试台正在建设,已研制了离子源等离子体发生器电源系统、等离子体电极高压电源及梯度极分压器、抑制极负高压电源等电源系统,以及高压传输线及缓冲器,在测试台上开展了对EAST中性束注入器第一台兆瓦级强流离子源样机进行整体电源系统测试和离子源起弧放电的初步测试,完成了离子源电源系统初步性能测试及...     

Change in magnetic properties of MgB2 thin films after irradiation by 200 MeV Au ion beam

The SHI irradiation induced effects on magnetic properties of MgB₂ thin films are reported. The films having thickness 300-400 nm, prepared by hybrid physical chemical vapor deposition (HPCVD) were irradiated by 200 MeV Au ion beam (S_e ∼ 23 keV/nm) at the fluence 1 × 10¹² ion/cm². Interestingly, increase in the transition temperature T_c from 35.1 K to 36 K resulted after irradiation. Substantial enhancement of critical current density after irradiation was also observed because of the pinning provided by the defects created due to irradiation. The change in surface morphology due to irradiation is also studied.     

Controlled fabrication of ion track nanowires and channels

We describe a system for fabricating prescribed numbers of ion track nanochannels and nanowires from a few hundred down to one. It consists of two parts: first, a mobile tape transport system, which, in connection with an ion beam from a heavy-ion accelerator (nuclear charge Z above 18 and specific energy between 1 and 10 MeV/nucleon) tuned down to low flux density by means of defocusing and a set of sensitive fluorescence screens, can fabricate a series of equidistant irradiation spots on a tape, whereby each spot corresponds to a preset number of ion tracks. The tape transport system uses films of 36 mm width and thicknesses between 5 and 100 μm. The aiming precision of the system depends on the diameter of the installed beam-defining aperture, which is between 50 and 500 μm. The distance between neighboring irradiation spots on the tape is variable and typically set to 25 mm. After reaching the preset number of ion counts the irradiation is terminated, the tape is marked and moved to the next position. The irradiated frames are punched out to circular membranes with the irradiation spot in the center. The second part of the setup is a compact conductometric system with 10 picoampere resolution consisting of a computer controlled conductometric cell, sealing the membrane hermetically between two chemically inert half-chambers containing electrodes and filling/flushing openings, and is encased by an electrical shield and a thermal insulation. The ion tracks can be etched to a preset diameter and the system can be programmed to electroreplicate nanochannels in a prescribed sequence of magnetic/nonmagnetic metals, alloys or semiconductors. The goal of our article is to make the scientific community aware of the special features of single-ion fabrication and to demonstrate convincingly the significance of controlled etching and electro-replication.     

Modification of poly(ether ether ketone) by ion irradiation

Poly(ether ether ketone) was irradiated with 3.0 MeV Si²⁺, 3.25 MeV Cu²⁺ and 4.8 MeV Ag²⁺ ions to the fluences from 10¹² to 10¹⁴ cm⁻² and the effects of irradiation were studied using ERDA, RBS and FTIR methods. The irradiation leads to release of hydrogen from the PEEK surface layer modified by the ion beam. The release is mild for low ion fluences but it becomes more pronounced at the ion fluences above 10¹³ cm⁻². At highest ion fluences the hydrogen concentration falls to 20-35% of its initial value. In contrast to hydrogen no significant oxygen release was observed. The kinetic of the hydrogen release is similar for the three ion species. FTIR measurement shows deep structural changes of the polymer structure resulting from the ion irradiation.     

Preliminary results of proton beam characterization for a facility of broad beam in vitro cell irradiation

The interaction of charged particles with living matter needs to be well understood for medical applications. Particularly, it is useful to study how ion beams interact with tissues in terms of damage, dose released and dose rate.One way to evaluate the biological effects induced by an ion beam is by the irradiation of cultured cells at a particle accelerator, where cells can be exposed to different ions at different energies and flux.In this paper, we report the first results concerning the characterization of a broad proton beam obtained with our 2 MV tandem accelerator. For broad beam in vitro cell irradiation, the beam has to be stable over time, uniform over a ∼0.5 cm² surface, and a dose rate ranging from 0.1 to 10 Gy/min must be achievable. Results concerning the level of achievement of these requirements are presented in this paper for a 1 MeV proton beam.