Energetic Ion Effects on the Ion Saturation Current

The ion saturation current is very important in probe theory, which can be used to measure the electron temperature and the floating potential. In this work, the effects of energetic ions on the ion saturation current are studied via particle-in-cell simulations. It is found that the energetic ions and background ions can be treated separately as different species, and they satisfy their individual Bohm criterion at the sheath edge. It is shown that the energetic ions can significantly affect the ion saturation current if their concentration is greater than root T-e/(gamma T-i2(i2)), where T-e is the electron temperature, and gamma(i2) and T-i2 represent the polytropic coefficient and temperature of energetic ions, respectively. As a result, the floating potential and the I-V characteristic profile are strongly influenced by the energetic ions. When the energetic ion current dominates the ion saturation current, an analysis of the ion saturation current will yield the energetic ion temperature rather than the electron temperature.

Saturation Ion Current Densities in Inductively Coupled Hydrogen Plasma Produced by Large-Power Radio Frequency Generator

An experimental investigation of the saturation ion current densities （Jions） in hydrogen inductively coupled plasma （ICP） produced by a large-power （2-32 kW） radio frequency （RF） generator is reported, then some reasonable explanations are given out. With the increase of RF power, the experimental results show three stages： in the first stage （2-14 kW）, the electron temperature will rise with the increase of RF power in the ICP, thus, the Jions increases continually as the electron temperature rises in the ICP. In the second stage （14 20 kW）, as some H- ions lead to the mutual neutralization （MN）, the slope of Jio^s variation firstly decreases then increases. In the third stage （20-32 kW）, both the electronic detachment （ED） and the associative detachment （AD） in the ICP result in the destruction of H- ions, therefore, the increased amplitude of the Jions in the third stage is weaker than the one in the first stage. In addition, with the equivalent transformer model, we successfully Explain that the Jions at different radial locations in ICP has the same rule. Finally, it is found that the Jions has nothing to do with the outer/inner puffing gas pressure ratio, which is attributed to the high-speed movement of hydrogen molecules.

The Arc Regulation Characteristics of the High-Current Ion Source for the EAST Neutral Beam Injector

The arc regulation method is applied to the high-current ion source for high-power hydrogen ion beam extraction for the first time. The characteristics of the arc and beam, including the probe ion saturation current, the arc power and the beam current, are studied with feedback control. The results show that the arc regulation method can be successfully applied to ion beam extraction. This lays a sound foundation for the testing of a new ion source and the operation of a conditioned ion source for neutral beam injector devices.