Patent Application
20080073552
The present invention is illustrated in the accompanying drawings:
The above described drawing figures illustrate the described apparatus and its method of use in at least one of its preferred, best mode embodiment, which is further defined in detail in the following description. Those having ordinary skill in the art may be able to make alterations and modifications to what is described herein without departing from its spirit and scope. Therefore, it must be understood that what is illustrated is set forth only for the purposes of example and that it should not be taken as a limitation in the scope of the present apparatus and method of use.
Described now in detail is a method and apparatus useful for confinement, acceleration, neutralization and compression of an ion field 5 in a vacuum space. As shown in
An ion source 30 is a plasma generator from which ions may be extracted and accelerated in a chosen direction. Several types of ion sources are used today including those that use RF, Penning, Plasmatron, multiple confinement, electron-cyclotron resonance (ECR) and electron beam techniques. In the present apparatus a ring shaped ion source 30 is positioned proximally, as shown, so as to project a cylindrical stream of ions 32 into the interior of solenoid 10, thereby establishing the ion field 5 between the magnetizable elements 20′ and 20″ and bounded by the interior surface 11 of solenoid 10. The ion source 30 is preferably made up of modified linear ion beam sources of the type commercially available from Ion Tech, Inc. of Ft. Collins, Colo., model number 0666RF, which produces a 1000 ma ion current projected in a 66 cm linear format in a selected direction. Such an ion source can be easily modified to produce an arc shaped discharge and when arranged with other similar sources, they may form a continuous circular discharge as is used in the preferred embodiment. The ion source technology is well developed and is referenced to U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,973,447 and 6,086,962 which are hereby incorporated herein by reference. In the present application the circular ion beam is directed through an annular gap between the proximal magnetizable element 20′ on one side of the annular gap, and an annular high-mu collar 25′ and the solenoid 10 on the other side of the annular gap.
A proximally positioned drive 40 is preferably engaged with proximal magnetizable element 20′, as shown, and is enabled for moving magnetizable element 20′ axially toward fixed element 20″, element 20′ being of such size as to fit into and move within solenoid 10. The drive 40 may be a motor driven lead screw, a pneumatic or hydraulic driven extensor (as shown), or any other well known mechanical linear drive system of sufficient force and structural integrity as to fulfill the objectives defined above.
The solenoid 10 comprises segments arranged axially in side-by-side positions as shown in
In a preferred embodiment, the magnetizable elements 20′ and 20″ are positioned symmetrically on the axis of symmetry 12 and more preferably are coaxial therewith. However, the elements 20′ and 20″ may alternately be positioned asymmetrically with respect to the axis of symmetry 12.
As stated above, the ion source 30 may comprise a single source, several sources or a plurality of ion sources and if formed as a plurality of ion sources, they may be arranged in a pattern such as a circle or oval. As can be seen in
The present apparatus may be operated without the two magnetizable elements 20′ and 20″ by merely accelerating the ions 32 into solenoid 10 from the ion source 30 wherein the ions 32 are trapped by a means for trapping the ions 32 such as a significantly more highly energized proximal and distal coil segments 16 and 19 respectively, which create a mirror field at both ends of solenoid 10. A means for space charge neutralization 50 is preferably provided as shown in
The above described apparatus is operated to produce injection, confinement, acceleration and compression of the ion field 5. In the preferred method the solenoid 10 is energized to create an axial magnetic field aligned with the axis of symmetry of solenoid 10 as is typical and well known. The distal magnetizable element 20″ is magnetized by the distal magnetizing coil 19 to form a first magnetic mirror at the distal end of solenoid 10. Ions 32 are injected into the solenoid 10 axially from the ion source 30 peripherally past the proximal magnetizable element 20′ and toward the distal magnetizable element 20″ which, as stated, functions as a magnetic mirror during this process, i.e., filling of the solenoid 10 with ions. The ions 32 move in fixed radiuses with respect to the common axis 12 through a radial magnetic cusp field established between the proximal magnetizable element 20′ and the high-mu collar 25′ which is positioned around the outer distal aspect of the proximal coil 16, and this results in a selected amount of the injected ion beam axially directed energy being converted into azimuthally directed energy. This establishes a well organized self-colliding energetic beam of low entropy ions 32 spiraling within the storage coil 17 where at axially distant positions, the ions 32 encounter a stronger magnetic field strength which is established by the distal magnetizable element 20″ and its associated coil 19, whereupon, the ions 32 are reflected back toward the ion source. This continues as the solenoid 10 fills until a desired ion density is reached in the ion field 5, and then the proximal magnetizing coil 16 is energized causing the proximal magnetizable element 20′ to form a second magnetic mirror. The ion field 5, at this time, is trapped within solenoid 10 between elements 20′ and 20″. The proximal magnetizable element 20′ is now driven into solenoid 10 as shown in
In the above description, to more easily relate the elements described to those shown in the drawing figure, the words, “proximal” and “distal” are used. However, these words may be interchanged with “first” and “second” or “primary” and “secondary,” and so on, without loss of intrinsic meaning, and in the following claims, the more general “first” and “second” are used to distinguish between elements of the invention.
The enablements described in detail above are considered novel over the prior art of record and are considered critical to the operation of at least one aspect of the apparatus and its method of use and to the achievement of the above described objectives. The words used in this specification to describe the instant embodiments are to be understood not only in the sense of their commonly defined meanings, but to include by special definition in this specification: structure, material or acts beyond the scope of the commonly defined meanings. Thus if an element can be understood in the context of this specification as including more than one meaning, then its use must be understood as being generic to all possible meanings supported by the specification and by the word or words describing the element.
The definitions of the words or drawing elements described herein are meant to include not only the combination of elements which are literally set forth, but all equivalent structure, material or acts for performing substantially the same function in substantially the same way to obtain substantially the same result. In this sense it is therefore contemplated that an equivalent substitution of two or more elements may be made for any one of the elements described and its various embodiments or that a single element may be substituted for two or more elements in a claim.
Changes from the claimed subject matter as viewed by a person with ordinary skill in the art, now known or later devised, are expressly contemplated as being equivalents within the scope intended and its various embodiments. Therefore, obvious substitutions now or later known to one with ordinary skill in the art are defined to be within the scope of the defined elements. This disclosure is thus meant to be understood to include what is specifically illustrated and described above, what is conceptually equivalent, what can be obviously substituted, and also what incorporates the essential ideas.
The scope of this description is to be interpreted only in conjunction with the appended claims and it is made clear, here, that each named inventor believes that the claimed subject matter is what is intended to be patented.
