“50 Years of Varian sputter ion pumps and new technologies”

Following the SIP, the Ultra High Vacuum (UHV) technology was developed, mainly driven by High Energy Physics and Surface Science. During the two following decades most of Research & Development activities were focused to improve the operation of SIP towards high pressure. Most of the achievements were then made obsolete by turbomolecular pumps, which became the ideal complement of SIP at relatively high pressure. The range of applications for ion pumps than became more clearly defined as UHV. Therefore R&D focus moved to low pressure performance of SIP (magnetic field, controller, anode structure). A combination of sputter ion pumps with evaporable getters in the Titanium sublimation pump has been implemented since early times. More recently, the combination with non-evaporable getters (NEG) has become very common especially in particle accelerators. Integration of NEG in SIP, by applying inside the pump a NEG film with the technology originally developed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, is the most recent development.