Energy evaluation of pulsed heavy ion beam accelerated in 1-stage gap of bipolar pulse accelerator

We have developed a prototype of bipolar pulse accelerator (BPA), which can generate an intense pulsed ion beam with higher purity than the conventional ion diode. The BPA is operated with the bipolar pulse voltage and is a two-stage electrostatic accelerator. A coaxial gas puff plasma gun was used as an ion source, which was installed inside the grounded anode. We found that the ion beam was successfully accelerated in the 1st and 2nd gaps by applying the bipolar pulsed voltage to the drift tube. However, the evaluation of the ion energy via time of flight is not enough to demonstrate the principle of the BPA. Therefore, in order to evaluate the characteristics of the accelerated ion beam, we used a solid track detector (CR-39) with multi-step etching technique. In this study, we evaluated the ion energy by measuring ion range in CR-39. The energy of the nitrogen ion was estimated to be 94±42 keV. (author)