Ohmic heated sheet for the Ca ion beam production

The production of intense accelerated (48)Ca ion beams is the key problem in the experiments on the synthesis of new superheavy nuclei. For this purpose in the FLNR (JINR), an electron cyclotron resonance ion source is used at the U-400 cyclotron. The combination of a micro oven with a hot tantalum sheet inside the discharge chamber allowed the production of the intense (48)Ca(5+) ion beam at the (48)Ca consumption of about 0.5 mg/h. In this case, the tantalum sheet is heated by microwaves and plasma electrons. The microwave power of up to 500 W is required to heat the sheet to the temperature of about 500 degrees C. To decrease the required microwave power, a new sheet with a direct Ohmic heating was designed. The present paper describes the method, technique, and preliminary experimental results on the production of the Ca ion beam.