Design of a test-bench for a reactor

The ion sources are machines capable of producing beams of charged particles. They are widely used in the industrial field where their applications range from ionic implantation in semiconductors or medical treatments against cancer to satellite engines known as thrusters. Ionic implantation in non-conductive materials is also a large industrial field in which ion sources play a fundamental role [1]. All ion sources generate a physical plasma from which the ions are then extracted to form a beam. The characteristics of this type of machines in terms of reliability, efficiency and reproducibility as well as the characteristics of the particle beams extracted from them are closely linked to the parameters of the plasma they generate and those depend strongly of the engineering design of the machine. This paper shows the design of a test-bench built with the purpose of studying the influence of the engineering design of a plasma reactor on its characteristics and, consequently, on the particle beams that can be extracted from it. The test-bench, which has been called TIPS: Test-bench for Ion Sources Plasma Studies, consists of an ECR-type plasma reactor (Electron Cyclotron Resonance) that has undergone important structural modifications to give it the flexibility that an engineering experimental study requires.