A self-magnetic field penning-like vacuum arc ion source design

Summary form only given. Occluded hydrogen vacuum arc ion source can be used as pulsed proton source. Increase the proton percent is one of the design goal. Improved on traditional two washers source, the new design adopts two cathodes and one anode. The main cathode is titanium hydride washer adjacent anode. The arc occurs between these two electrodes. Downstream of the plasma jet, in the plasma expansion zone, a molybdenum mesh is used as anticathode. A solenoid is set co-axially outside the electrode washers, which could produce several hundred gauss magnetic field. The coil current is supplied by the arc current. This design absorbed the conception of penning gauge. By applying magnetic field and potential well to constrain the electrons, the ionization rate could be increased. The experiment shows proton ratio of the extracted ion current could reach 30% on the condition of 80A discharge current, which is an ordinary value as the conventional source. More works are planned to optimize this design.