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press release to the NanoSolutions 2008 in Frankfurt
Beams of highly charged Ions for surface analysis
The development of Dresden physicists presents itself new possibilities in cancer therapy
Ions are today a common tool in different applications for surface analysis and structuring. Especially highly charged ions are a promising and trend-setting technology because of their high neutralization energies. Those are set free by interaction with solids in extremely short time and high energy densities in nanometer scale. In that way nano-structures can be produced on solid surfaces.
To utilize highly charged ions successfully, an economically, compact and stable source is required. With the introduction of “Dresden EBIT” ion source types (Dresden Electron Beam Ion Trap), physicists from Dresden made a breakthrough in that development. A work group around Dr. Guenter Zschornack (Technical University Dresden, Institute for Applied Physics) and the DREEBIT GmbH Dresden developed this innovative ion sources with their extraordinary inner workings. Dr. Zschornack: “To form high density electron beams as ionization medium, we don’t use super conducting magnets working near absolute zero. We press the electron beam to extremely high densities using magnetic fields in room temperature conditions. With that beam we shoot the introduced atoms, trapped in the electrostatic field of the source. The electron beam wrests electrons from the atomic shell and produces positive charged ions. An electric field extracts the ions out of the electron beam for usage in different applications.”
The development team sees promising possibilities of application in so called Focused Ion Beam (FIB) facilities. New generations of data storage devices could be developed by using ion bombardment as well as effective ways to produce quantum dots with new and valuable characteristics. The use of highly charged ions in “Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry” is likewise effective because of the possibility to use different types of ions (elements and charge states) without retrofitting the ion source of the spectrometer. So the Dresden EBIT ion sources clearly surpass formerly used devices in its fields of applications and capabilities.
The functional principle of the ion source “Dresden EBIT” has been applied for an international patent and is already patented in the USA.
From the development of a new high-performance ion source “Dresden EBIS-SC” new fields of application in medical particle therapy arise. The Dresden physicists have the vision to provide beams of highly charged carbon ions in cancer therapy, which lead to an advancement in technical and economical parameters of existing facilities.
The Freistaat Sachsen and the EFRE-Fond of the E.U. support the project.
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