Design of a test-bench for a hydrogen plasma reactor

Abstract

ABSTRACT
• 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 nonconductive 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. 
• Keywords: plasma reactor, ion source engineering.