Design of an ion extractor system for a prototype ion source experiment for SST-1 neutral beam injector

Abstract An ion extractor system has been designed for the steady state superconducting tokamak (SST-1) neutral beam injector (NBI) for an experiment using a prototype ion source with fully integrated regulated high voltage power supply (RHVPS) and data acquisition and control system (DACS) developed at Institute for Plasma Research (IPR) to obtain experience of NB operation. The extractor system is capable of extracting positive hydrogen ion beam of ∼10 A current at ∼20 kV. This paper presents the beam optics study for detailed design of an ion extraction system which could meet this requirement. It consists of 3 grid accel – decel system, each of the grid has 217 straight cylindrical holes of 8 mm diameter. Grids are placed on a specially designed G-10 block; a fiber reinforc plastic (FRP) isolator of outer diameter of 820 mm and 50 mm thickness. Provisions are made for supplying high voltage to the grid system through the embedded feed-throughs. Extractor system has been fabricated, mounted on the SST-1 neutral beam injector and has extracted positive hydrogen ion beam of 4 A at 20 kV till now.