Negative ion production in multicusp sources

The study of negative ion production in the multicusp negative ion sources (MS) was done by the directed deposition of well-defined amount of cesium into MS, by the cesium recovery from the polluted layers in the MS and by the plasma grid masking. The data obtained evidences the surface-plasma mechanism of negative ion production in the MS. It is shown that a dynamic cesium-tungsten coverage on a plasma grid surface provides the enhanced H- production in the MS. The Cs+W coverage is produced on the hot plasma grid surface due to coadsorption of cesium and of tungsten, evaporated from filaments. The permanent flux of cesium to plasma grid coverage is produced by the thick Cs+W reservoir with a high (75%) percentage of cesium on the cold anode surface. A relatively high cesium seed with a rate of about 20 mg/1 h/30 shots operation is necessary to support the increased H- production in the regular MS. Electrode processing by an additional discharge recovers the cesium from the aged coverage and enhances the H- production without an additional cesium seed. Recovery processing permits the use of deposited cesium more efficiently and to minimize cesium addition during the MS long-term operation. An essential decrease of cesium escape to accelerator and an improvement of injector high voltage operation is produced by introducing the shutter mask at plasma grid surface. The shutter mask experiment displayed, that >60% of H- beam current was born on the hot shutter mask surface. The source operation with a high negative shutter mask biasing and an increased hydrogen pressure resulted in a 35% higher H- yield, than of regular MS. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.