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 $Be+27$ beam and used in $Be7(p,γ)8B$ 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 $CF4$ leak connected to that chamber serves as the source of $CF4$ for the reaction to produce $BeF2.$ The $BeF2$ 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.