Recently ECR sources have been proposed as charge-breeders to ionize radioactive nuclei produced in nuclear reactions. Nuclear physicists want to study nuclei far from the “island of stability” in the chart of nuclides. None of these nuclei are stable and most decay within a few seconds of being produced, so the only way to study them is to be very efficient at producing, collecting, and accelerating them before they decay. These radioactive nuclei are produced in nuclear reactions between accelerated stable isotope beam ions and stationary atoms in a target. The nuclear reaction products are scattered out of the target (splattered out may be more descriptive).  These radioactive ions are then slowed and collected as 1⁺ ions in helium gas. The 1⁺ ions are then injected into the charge-breeder where they are further ionized to an n⁺ charge state (n⁺ can be as high as 6⁺ for carbon, 8+ for oxygen, and up to 92⁺ for uranium). The highly charged ions are extracted from the charge breeder and accelerated to high energies for nuclear physics experiments.

Some of the required properties for charge-breeders are incompatible with conventional high charge-state ECR sources. The charge-breeder field is just beginning to be studied.

Scientific Solutions designed and delivered a charge-breeder ECR source to Texas A&M University in October 2007.