A (11)C molecular production/separation system (CMPS) has been developed as part of an isotope separation on line system for simultaneous positron emission tomography imaging and heavy-ion cancer therapy using radioactive (11)C ion beams. In the ISOL system, (11)CH4 molecules will be produced by proton irradiation and separated from residual air impurities and impurities produced during the irradiation. The CMPS includes two cryogenic traps to separate specific molecules selectively from impurities by using vapor pressure differences among the molecular species. To investigate the fundamental performance of the CMPS, we performed separation experiments with non-radioactive (12)CH4 gases, which can simulate the chemical characteristics of (11)CH4 gases. We investigated the separation of CH4 molecules from impurities, which will be present as residual gases and are expected to be difficult to separate because the vapor pressure of air molecules is close to that of CH4. We determined the collection/separation efficiencies of the CMPS for various amounts of air impurities and found desirable operating conditions for the CMPS to be used as a molecular separation device in our ISOL system.

The most recent experimental information on electron string phenomenon, such as two step transition to electron string state, stability of e-strings in condition of electron energy recuperation, are described. The new technology developments of electron string ion sources (ESIS) include pulse injection of gaseous species in e-string and its efficient conversion to ion beams, slow ion extraction, ion-ion cooling of heavy ions with CH(4) coolant, and a progress in the construction of the new Joint Institute for Nuclear Research ESIS with 6 T solenoid are briefly considered.

The Electron String type of Ion Sources (ESIS) was developed, constructed and tested first in the Joint Institute for NuclearResearch. 1 These ion sources can be the appropriate sources for production of pulsed C 4+ and C 6+ ion beams which can be used for cancer therapy accelerators. In fact the test ESIS Krion-6T already now at the solenoid magnetic field only 4.6 T provides more than 10 10 C 4+ ions per pulse and about 5·10 9 C 6+ ions per pulse. Such ion sources could be suitable for application at synchrotrons. It was also found, that Krion-6T can provide more than 10 11 C 6+ ions per second at 100 Hz repetition rate, and the repetition rate can be increased at the same or larger ion output per second. This makes ESIS applicable at cyclotrons as well. As for production of 11 C radioactive ion beams ESIS can be the most economic kind of ion source. To proof that the special cryogenic cell for pulse injection of gaseous species into electron string was successfully tested using the ESIS Krion-2M. 2

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A singly charged ion source (SCIS) has been designed using a newly developed three-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) code. The SCIS is to be used in an isotope separation on-line (ISOL) system that provides 11C ions for heavy-ion cancer therapy with simultaneous verification of the dose distribution using positron emission tomography. The SCIS uses low-energy electron beams to produce singly charged carbon ions efficiently and maintain a high vacuum in the ISOL system. Because the SCIS has to realize a production efficiency of 1% if its carbon ions are to be used in the ISOL system, a suitable design for the SCIS was investigated by using the developed PIC code to study the beam trajectories of the electrons and extracted ions. The simulation results show that hollow electron beams are produced in the designed SCIS resulting in a high effective electron current. The results also predict that the designed SCIS would realize ion-production efficiencies (IPEs) of εSCIS ≃ 6.7% for CO2+ production from CO2 gas and εSCIS ≃ 0.1% for C+ production from CH4 gas. Moreover, to examine the validity of the developed code and confirm that the SCIS was able to be designed appropriately, the space-charge-limited current of the electron gun and the total IPE obtained by adding the IPEs of each ion were compared between the experiment and the simulation.