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 ${}^{\mathrm{7}}{\mathrm{Be}}^{\mathrm{+2}}$ beam and used in ${}^{\mathrm{7}}\mathrm{Be}{\mathrm{(p,\gamma )}}^{\mathrm{8}}\mathrm{B}$ 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 ${\mathrm{CF}}_{\mathrm{4}}$ leak connected to that chamber serves as the source of ${\mathrm{CF}}_{\mathrm{4}}$ for the reaction to produce ${\mathrm{BeF}}_{\mathrm{2}}\mathrm{.}$ The ${\mathrm{BeF}}_{\mathrm{2}}$ 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.