Electron cyclotron resonance charge breeder (invited)

Initially developed for radioactive ion beam production, the electron cyclotron resource (ECR) charge breeder shows that the beam injection of a primary beam inside an ECR ion source is a very general process for beam production. In this article we will review the latest results obtained on the ISN Grenoble test bench for the production of clockwise (CW) or pulsed metallic ion beams with the so-called "1(+)/n(+)" method. New results are given for CW operation where the efficiency is particularly optimized for application to multicharged radioactive ion production (for example, 3.5% for Zn1+--> Zn9+, 4.2% for Pb1+--> Pb24+, 5% for Rb1+--> Rb15+). Different ion sources have been used to study the variation of the efficiency as a function of the energy of the 1+ primary beam. Charge state distributions are especially measured for Pb and Rb ions. A new mode of operation, the electron cyclotron resonance ion trap breeder/buncher, which permits the trapping and the bunching of the n+ ion beam is demonstrated and experimentally verified. The injection of a 400 nAeRb(1+) ion beam leads to a 11.5 mu Ae peak current of the Rb15+ ion beam extracted during the first ms. The temporal evolution of the cumulated particle transformation and trapping efficiency is measured in the case of Rb15+. This new method shows that it is possible to modify the time structure of the injected beam, just by trapping the ions inside the plasma and re-extracting them by using the "afterglow pulsed mode." It will also be shown that it is possible to produce "multi-charged metallic ions" by using a primary source for the dissociation of a complex molecule and then by injecting the low charge state beam inside the multicharged electron cyclotron resonance ion source. A preliminary example will be presented for the production of U26+ by injection of U3+ obtained from dissociation of UF6 gas. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0034-6748(00)60702-5].