Construction of a 300-keV compact ion microbeam system with a three-stage acceleration lens

Hydrogen ion microbeams were experimentally formed at beam energies below 150 keV using a 300-keV compact microbeam system that was constructed at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency. This paper is a preliminary report on the performance of the three-stage acceleration lens used in the compact microbeam system. This system consists of a three-stage acceleration lens and a plasma-type ion source. Since the three-stage acceleration lens was designed to simultaneously accelerate and focus the ion beam, the compact microbeam system is only about 1-m high and can be placed in a small experimental room. To evaluate the effectiveness of the three-stage acceleration lens, experimentally measured beam sizes are compared with theoretically calculated ones. The calculated and measured beam sizes were consistent within 10%. This shows that the three-stage acceleration lens is effective as a focusing lens for forming microbeams.