Requirements on ion source performance for ion beam analysis

High Voltage Engineering Europa B.V., P.O. Box 99, Amersfoort 3800AB, The Netherlands

Ion beam analysis techniques are performed routinely with MeV ions of H, D, He, C, N and O. In addition, ERD may require heavy ions as well. A variety of ion sources are used in differently configured ion beam injection systems, often feeding tandem particle accelerators. Most of the IBA techniques require modest ion beam currents (several hundreds of nA), easily provided by standard accelerator equipment. However, other applications including Nanoprobes, cultural heritage studies and microbiology might require submicron probe PIXE or external beam applications, which necessitate the highest possible ion beam brightness to reduce analysis time. To accommodate such requirements HVE has developed a new Tandetron injection system with an upgraded version of its 358 Duoplasmatron, that demonstrated increased hydrogen ion beam brightness from about 2 A m-2 rad-2 eV-1 to approx. 6 A m-2 rad-2 eV-1. In addition, ion beam currents for H, D, He, C, N, O were increased and attention was paid to improve ion beam uptime, mean time between failures and serviceability. In this contribution we will discuss the requirements from ion source technology applied to IBA techniques, exemplify design details and quantify the performance on the new negative ion beam injection system based on the HVEE model 358 ion source.