Negative chlorine ions from multicusp radio frequency ion source for heavy ion fusion applications

Use of high mass atomic neutral beams produced from negative ions as drivers for inertial confinement fusion has been suggested recently. Best candidates for the negative ions would be bromine and iodine with sufficiently high mass and electron affinity. These materials require a heated vapor ion source. Chlorine was selected for initial testing because it has similar electron affinity to those of bromine and iodine, and is available in gaseous form. An experiment was set up by the Plasma and Ion Source Technology Group in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to measure achievable current densities and other beam parameters by using a rf driven multicusp ion source [K. N. Leung, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 65, 1165 (1994); Q. Ji et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 73, 822 (2002)]. Current density of 45 mA/cm2 was achieved with 99.5% of the beam as atomic negative chlorine at 2.2 kW of rf power. An electron to negative ion ratio as low as 7 to 1 was observed, while the ratio of positive and negative chlorine ion currents w...