Medium-mass ion beams including nitrogen and oxygen were produced
from a cryogenic diode with N2O ice as the ion source.
The nominal diode voltage was 300–400 kV, and the peak
ion current was 240 A. The beam divergence angle was measured
with a five-aperture time-integrated pinhole camera. The five
camera images were analyzed to estimate the spatial distribution
of the beam source divergence angle along the anode radius,
yielding a value of 5–6 mrad for the average microdivergence.
This is low enough for this ion source to be studied further
in the near future. If possible, we want to consider this as
one of the probable candidate ion sources for ion beam drivers
for future inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and inertial fusion
energy (IFE) applications.