• R. Sah, A. Dudas, M.L. Neubauer
  Muons, Inc, Batavia
• J.W. Kwan
  LBNL, Berkeley, California

In­duc­tion lin­ear ac­cel­er­a­tors are fea­tured in ac­cel­er­a­tor-based re­search cur­rent­ly sup­port­ed by the Of­fice of Fu­sion En­er­gy Sci­ences. Over the next few years, the re­search will con­cen­trate on de­vel­op­ing in­tense ion sources and on study­ing the physics of spa­tial com­pres­sion, neu­tral­ized trans­port, and fo­cus­ing of the beam. The large di­am­e­ter of lithi­um alu­mi­no-sil­i­cate ion emit­ters for large cur­rents rep­re­sents the cur­rent state of the art for emis­sion den­si­ties of 1-1.5 mA/cm². Also, op­er­at­ing tem­per­a­tures of the sur­face are lim­it­ed by the tem­per­a­ture of alu­mi­na-pot­ted heater pack­ages. We pro­pose a novel sys­tem for in­creas­ing the emis­sion of lithi­um ions from β-eu­cryp­tite through mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the sur­face mor­phol­o­gy by sput­ter etch­ing with argon plus other gases. The re­sult­ing local field en­hance­ment will in­crease the ion emis­sion over that of a mi­cro­scop­i­cal­ly flat sur­face. In ad­di­tion, a free-stand­ing graphite heater as­sem­bly will be used to in­crease the tem­per­a­ture of the sur­face of the emis­sion source.