A note on the magnetohydrodynamics of liquid metal ion sources

Liquid metal ion sources (LMIS) are attracting increasingly more interest because of their potential applications in the field of ion beam technology. For commercial applications of the sources it is important to be able to predict their current-voltage characteristics, i.e. what potential must be applied to produce a given ion current and clearly this current will depend on the supply of liquid to the tip of the needle. This preliminary investigation examines the dynamics of the fluid flow in order to determine the important parameters that can ultimately affect the current voltage characteristics of the sources. (U.K.)