Discharge Characteristics of Large-Area High-Power RF Ion Source for Neutral Beam Injector on Fusion Devices

The large-area high-power radio-frequency (RF) driven ion sources based on the negative hydrogen (deuterium) ion beam extraction are the major components of neutral beam injection (NBI) systems in future large-scale fusion devices such as an ITER and DEMO. Positive hydrogen (deuterium) RF ion sources were the major components of the second NBI system on ASDEX-U tokamak. A test large-area high-power RF ion source (LAHP-RaFIS) has been developed for steady-state operation at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) to extract the positive ions, which can be used for the NBI heating and current drive systems in the present fusion devices, and to extract the negative ions for negative ion-based plasma heating and for future fusion devices such as a Fusion Neutron Source and Korea-DEMO. The test RF ion source consists of a driver region, including a helical antenna and a discharge chamber, and an expansion region. RF power can be transferred at up to 10 kW with a fixed frequency of 2 MHz through an optimized RF matching system. An actively water-cooled Faraday shield is located inside the driver region of the ion source for the stable and steady-state operations of RF discharge. The characteristics and uniformities of the plasma parameter in the RF ion source were measured at the lowest area of the expansion bucket using two RF-compensated electrostatic probes along the direction of the short- and long-dimensions of the expansion region. The plasma parameters in the expansion region were characterized by the variation of loaded RF power (voltage) and filling gas pressure.