ASIPP’s RF Ion Source Achieves High Power Plasma Discharge with Long Pulse of 1000s

Chinese scientists have reached long pulse of 1000s plasma discharge with RF power of 82 kW, marking a new milestone in the development of China’s high power radio frequency (RF) ion source.

The large area RF ion source is one of the key parts of neutral beam injector on fusion device. The research and development of RF ion source involves many disciplines, such as precision machinofacture, physics of RF plasma, RF power transmission and matching, RF power coupling and feedback control of plasma discharge.

Thanks to the hard work by the R&D team of ion source in neutral beam injection division of Institute of Plasma Physics, Hefei Institute of Physical Science, a number of bottleneck problems and then developed a large area RF ion source to achieve long pulse plasma discharge of 1000s with high power of 82kW for the first time.

According to the research team, they believe that it may lay a good foundation for the development of high power RF ion source.

This work supported by the Key Program of Research and Development of Hefei Science Center, CAS, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Key R&D Program of China.(XIE Yahong reports)

Picture of large area RF ion source