High-Charge-State Ion Beam Generation in a High-Current Pulsed Vacuum Arc Source

We have explored the generation of high-chargestate ion beams by a vacuum arc ion source. A pulsed vacuum arc with current up to several kiloamperes and pulse duration about 1 μs was used. In a vacuum arc ion source with bismuth cathode and at a background pressure of about 40 μPa, a bismuth ion beam was formed with a maximum charge state Bi
¹⁹⁺
. For an ion accelerating voltage of 60 kV, this corresponds to a maximum bismuth ion energy of over 1 MeV.