High current H₂⁺ and H₃⁺ beam generation by pulsed 2.45 GHz electron cyclotron resonance ion source

The permanent magnet 2.45 GHz electron cyclotron resonance ion source at Peking University can produce more than 100 mA hydrogen ion beam working at pulsed mode. For the increasing requirements of cluster ions (H₂ ⁺ and H₃⁺) in linac and cyclotron, experimental study was carried out to further understand the hydrogen plasma processes in the ion source for the generation of cluster ions. The constituents of extracted beam have been analyzed varying with the pulsed duration from 0.3 ms to 2.0 ms (repetition frequency 100 Hz) at different operation pressure. The fraction of cluster ions dramatically increased when the pulsed duration was lower than 0.6 ms, and more than 20 mA pure H₃⁺ ions with fraction 43.2% and 40 mA H₂⁺ ions with fraction 47.7% were obtained when the operation parameters were adequate. The dependence of extracted ion fraction on microwave power was also measured at different pressure as the energy absorbed by plasma will greatly influence electron temperature and electron density then the plasma processes in the ion source. More details will be presented in this paper.