Development of a low energy ion beam facility at NSC

25-28Mass analyzed ion beams of various energies have played an essential part in almost all aspects of modern physics. There are few accelerator facilities for conducting various experiments in nuclear physics, materials science, atomic and molecular physics in India. Some of them are heavy ion tandem accelerators providing light as well as heavy ion beams in the range of a few MeV to hundreds of MeV, cyclotrons for light ion beam in the range of tens of MeV to around one hundred MeV, and low energy ion implanters providing beams up to 200 keV. In this paper a unique low energy ion beam facility set up at the Nuclear Science Centre for providing low energy (from a few keV to a few MeV) ions is described. The important features of this facility are availability of large currents of multiply charged positive ions from an Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) ion source and negatively charged atomic and cluster ions from a cesium sputtered negative ion source placed entirely on a isolated high voltage platform