Status report on ECR ion sources at HIMAC

The Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator in Chiba (HIMAC) at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS) is the first heavy-ion accelerator complex dedicated to cancer therapy. Over 1600 patients have already been treated with 140-400 MeV/amu carbon beams since 1994. The production of carbon ions for medical applications has been established. It is quite obvious from our experiences that the ECR ion source is an extremely suitable type of ion source for this purpose. An 18 GHz ECR ion source is mainly operated to offer various heavy-ion beams for basic experiments of biomedical science, physics, chemistry, etc. The results of recent developments, a thermal-controlled MIVOC system, and an electron bombardment evaporator are also reported. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.