Development of an Occluded-Gas Ion Source

Abstract

An ion source for pulsed operation has been developed which is based on producing a spark discharge between electrodes of a transition metal in which ordinary hydrogen or deuterium has been occluded. The beam consists principally of ions of hydrogen and of the electrode material. No neutral gas is evolved between pulses. High beam-current densities have been obtained, both with axial and with radial extraction. Various methods have been devised for filtering out the heavy-mass components of the beam.