Production of neutron deficient rare isotope beams at IGISOL; on-line and off-line studies

This article reports on recent on-line yield measurements employing the light-ion and heavy-ion reaction-based ion guide systems and new results on a-recoil ion transport properties in ion guides with and without electric fields. In addition, the presently used ion guide designs for fusion evaporation reactions are introduced. The present study investigated different schemes for ion extraction from the gas cell. The addition of an extra ring electrode between the traditional skimmer electrode and the exit hole led to transmission independent of the primary beam intensity as opposed to strong intensity dependence observed earlier with the plain skimmer only. Furthermore, the mass resolving power of the IGISOL mass separator was increased to 1100 as compared to 250 with the skimmer system when using the RF-sextupole for the extraction from the heavy-ion ion guide. As a new method, the possibility to increase the ion guide efficiency by injecting electrons into the stopping volume is introduced. The efficiency of the electron emitter ion guide was a factor of ten higher in off-line conditions. Also, the influence of the buffer gas purity on the ion survival is discussed. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.