Electron cyclotron resonance ion source related development work for heavy-ion irradiation tests

The European Space Agency (ESA) uses the facilities at the Accelerator Laboratory (Department of Physics, University of Jyvaskyla: JYFL) for heavy-ion irradiation tests of electronic components. Electron cyclotron resonance ion source related development work has been carried out in order to meet the requirements set by the project. During the irradiation tests several beam changes are performed during the day. Therefore, the time needed for the beam changes has to be minimized. As a consequence, a beam cocktail having nearly the same m/q ratio is used. This makes it possible a quick tuning of the cyclotron to select the required ion for the irradiation. In addition to this requirement, very high charge states for the heavy elements are needed to reach a penetration depth of 100 Am in silicon. In this article we present some procedures to optimize the ion source operation. We also present results of the first three-frequency heating tests. The main frequency of 14 GHz was fed from a klystron and both secondary frequencies were launched from a traveling-wave tube amplifier (TWTA). Two separate frequency generators were used simultaneously to provide different signals for the TWTA. During the test an improvement of about 20% was observed for Kr-84(25+) and Xe-129(30+) ion beams when the third frequency was applied. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.