A novel room temperature electron beam ion trap for atomic physics and materials research

Highly charged ions are used in basic investigations to study problems in a tomic and plasma physics. Further on, the application of highly charged ion s in materials research and other fields as nanomechanics and information t echniques grew significantly in the last years. In the present paper, we re port on results derived with a warm electron beam ion trap (WEBIT) that wor ks without any cryogenic equipment. A special source construction allows to generate dense electron beams at room temperature with a current density o f up to 240 A cm(-2) and an acting ionization factor of (2...5) x 10(21) cm (-2). Ions like Ar37+, Xe44+ and Ir65+ were detected by X-ray spectroscopy. A charge capacity of about 8 x 10(7) elementary charges of the trap is est imated. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.