Study of microwave components for an electron cyclotron resonance source: Simulations and performance

Abstract

A high power (2 kW, CW) magnetron-based microwave system operating at 2.45 GHz has been designed, tested, characterized, and used to produce plasma. The system consists of a microwave source, an isolator, a directional coupler, a three-stub tuner, a high voltage break, a microwave vacuum window, and a microwave launcher. These microwave components were simulated using microwave studio software. The low power and full term characterization of the microwave system has been done using vector network analyzer. The system was tested for 2 kW continuous wave of microwave power using glass-water load. The microwave system has been developed to study the microwave interaction with plasma at different operation regimes (Gases: Nitrogen, argon and hydrogen; Gas pressure: 10-5-10-3 mbar; Microwave power: 300-1000 W; Magnetic field: 875-1000 G) and to extract the proton beam current with hydrogen produced plasma. A plasma density ∼5 × 1011 cm-3 and average electron temperature of ∼13 eV was obtained. This article describes various aspects of the microwave system including design, fabrication, characterization and performance studies of the microwave components. © 2014 Indian Academy of Sciences.