The effect of plasma electrode collar structure on the performance of the JYFL 14Â GHz electron cyclotron resonance ion source

The influence of a so-called collar structure on the performance of the JYFL 14 GHz electron cyclotron resonance ion source (ECRIS) has been studied experimentally at the Department of Physics, University of Jyväskylä (JYFL). The collar is a cylindrical structure extruding inwards from the plasma electrode. The collar length was varied between 5 and 60 mm. For some ion species a moderate performance improvement was achieved in terms of extracted beam current and transverse emittance up to 30 mm collar length. Longer collars resulted in a substantial performance decrease. Different collar materials, i.e. nonmagnetic stainless steel, aluminum and Al2O3, and a wide range of ion species for elements ranging from 14N to 82Kr were studied. No clear material or ion species dependent behavior was observed. The experiments suggest that the extracted ions originate from a plasma volume which is at a considerable axial distance from the extraction aperture. Furthermore it is concluded that a substantial space exists surrounding the collar that could be utilized for applying novel techniques to boost the performance of ECR ion sources.