An electron cyclotron resonance source for radioactive beryllium ion beam production

An ECR ion source is converted to produce a beryllium fluoride beam, which will be stripped to 7Be+2 beam and used in 7Be(p,γ)8B experiments at ISAC. The source consists of an injection chemical chamber and a plasma chamber. Chemically purified (99.9%) BeO is placed in the chemical chamber which can be heated up to 1000 °C. A CF4 leak connected to that chamber serves as the source of CF4 for the reaction to produce BeF2. The BeF2 is then injected into the hot electron layer region of the plasma chamber to enhance the ionization efficiency. A detailed source description, beam parameters and ionization efficiency measurements are presented in this paper.