Production of intense uranium beams with inductive heating oven at Institute of Modern Physics

Rev Sci Instrum. 2019 Nov 1;90(11):113318. doi: 10.1063/1.5128419.

Abstract

HIAF (High Intensity heavy ion Accelerator Facility) is a new accelerator complex under construction at the Institute of Modern Physics. As the main injector of this project, the high-charge-state ECR ion source needs to provide intense uranium beams, such as 700 eμA of U35+. This requires the performance of metal ovens to be further improved so that the crucible can operate at an ultrahigh temperature for a long time without damage in a high magnetic field (>3 T). In order to meet these requirements, an inductive oven with special thermal shielding and support has been developed in the past two years. The off-line test result has shown that this oven can reach up to 2000 °C with ∼1.2 kW of heating power. After ∼5 days of continuous running on the SECRAL-II platform, the tantalum crucible survived. In this contribution, we will discuss the structure of this inductive oven and analyze the test results as well.