A VERY COMPACT ELECTRON-CYCLOTRON-RESONANCE ION-SOURCE

A new electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion source has been developed in the laboratory. The ECR condition at 2.45 GHz is obtained in a multicusp arrangement using a set of four parallelepiped-shaped SmCo magnets regularly spaced around a cylindrical ionization chamber 50 mm in diameter and 50 mm in height. The electromagnetic cavity is made of a shielded quarter-wavelength Lecher line resonator coaxially coupled to the microwave generator through an excitation loop antenna and a SMA-type connector. The extracted argon ion beam current density has been measured for different excitation modes fixed by the loop antenna orientation. A current density of 1 mA/cm2 has been reached with an incident microwave power of 110 W and a chamber pressure of 9 x 10(-3) mbar. The small dimensions of this ion source and its performance allow to use it not only in applications such as ion beam processing and cleaning or surface treatments in advanced microelectronics, but also as a neutralizer for ion deposition applications.