• F. Marti, S. Hitchcock, O.K. Kester, J.C. Oliva
  NSCL, East Lansing, Michigan

The US Department of Energy Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University includes a heavy ion superconducting linac capable of accelerating all ions up to uranium with energies higher than 200 MeV/u and beam power up to 400 kW. At an energy of approximately 17 MeV/u we plan to strip the beam to reduce the voltage needed in the rest of the linac to achieve the final energy. The design of the stripper is a challenging problem due to the high power deposited (approximately one kW) in the stripper media by the beam in the small beam size. One of the options being considered is a carbon foil stripper. We have developed a test chamber to study the thermal mechanical properties of different stripping media candidates (amorphous carbon, graphene, diamond). This chamber utilizes an electron beam to deposit powers similar to what the FRIB stripper will see in operation. The thermo-mechanical studies are a necessary condition but not sufficient. The effect of radiation damage must also be studied. We have utilized heavy ions (Pb) from the K500 cyclotron to study this issue. We present in this paper a summary of the requirements and the status of the studies.