Diamond stripper foil experience at SNS and PSR

The SNS is currently operating at about 35% of the 1.4 MW design power, and the diamond stripper foils developed at ORNL continue to perform well. Several corrugated, nanocrystalline diamond stripping foils have been tested at SNS. Beyond about 300 C of injected charge, significant distortion and darkening of the foils is observed. These foils are currently limited in freestanding area to about 17×25 mm due to stress-induced tears in larger foils. The PSR experience with these diamond foils has been promising, with the interesting observation that both the foil current due to secondary emission of electrons and the thermionic foil current are reduced for diamond foils relative to LANL/KEK foils. For comparable thickness foils, losses due to the H⁰ yield also appear to be higher for diamond. A recent development in our foil preparation has been a change to nano-seeded nucleation from the earlier microcrystal slurry ultrasonic abrasion technique. This has led to a more reproducible and uniform foil morphology with smaller crystallites. We now determine foil thickness using alpha particle ranging.