Construction of the 150kV Electrostatic Accelerator Tube

Abstract

An electrostatic accelerator tube capable of accelerating proton, deuteron, alpha beam and heavier ions up to an energy of 150keV has been designed and constructed. This tube can be operated with a Cockroft-Walton type high voltage generator. The construction of the tube is important from two different standpoints. First, because it will initiate the use of low energy accelerators for both scientific and industrial development in country and also this step will lead the country toward approaching the accelerator design technology, an issue which has been severely overlooked for the past few decades. The present accelerator tube consists of 11 different electrodes forming 3 cylindrical lenses, i.e., extractor lens, focusing lens and cooling lens. An accelerator column which includes 7 collimating lenses follows the cooling lens. The tube can accelerate 2H+ up to an energy of 150keV. The accelerator column was successfully tested for the high vacuum and the voltage up to 150kV. A radio frequency type ion source was used to check the performance of the tube. Measurements demonstrated that a beam current close to 850µA can be readily obtained in the present system.

Keywords

• accelerator tube
• electrostatic accelerator
• electrostatic lenses
• simion
• superfish
• ion optics