Characterization of intense pulsed aluminum ion beam by magnetically insulated diode with vacuum arc ion source

Intense pulsed heavy ion beam is expected to be applied to materials processing including surface modification and ion implantation. For those applications, it is very important to generate high-purity ion beams with various ion species. A magnetically insulated ion diode with an active ion source of a vacuum arc plasma gun has been developed in order to generate pulsed metallic ion beams. When the ion diode was operated at diode voltage ≈200 kV, diode current ≈15 kA and pulse duration ≈100 ns, the ion beam with an ion current density of > 200 A/cm ² was obtained at 50 mm downstream from the anode. From Thomson parabola spectrometer measurement, the ion beam consists of aluminum ions (Al ⁺, Al ²⁺ and Al ³⁺) of energy 60-300 keV and the proton impurities of energy 60-150 keV. The purity of the beam was estimated to be 89 %.