The results of a new epitaxial process using an industrial 6x2” wafer reactor with the introduction of HCl during the growth have been reported. A complete reduction of silicon nucleation in the gas phase has been observed even for high silicon dilution parameters (Si/H2>0.05) and an increase of the growth rate until about 20 µm/h has been measured. No difference has been observed in terms of defects, doping uniformity (average maximum variation 8%) and thickness uniformity (average maximum variation 1.2 %) with respect to the standard process without HCl.

An experimental campaign aiming to investigate electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma X-ray emission has been recently carried out at the ECRISs—Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Sources laboratory of Atomki based on a collaboration between the Debrecen and Catania ECR teams. In a first series, the X-ray spectroscopy was performed through silicon drift detectors and high purity germanium detectors, characterizing the volumetric plasma emission. The on-purpose developed collimation system was suitable for direct plasma density evaluation, performed “on-line” during beam extraction and charge state distribution characterization. A campaign for correlating the plasma density and temperature with the output charge states and the beam intensity for different pumping wave frequencies, different magnetic field profiles, and single-gas/gas-mixing configurations was carried out. The results reveal a surprisingly very good agreement between warm-electron density fluctuations, output beam currents, and the calculated electromagnetic modal density of the plasma chamber. A charge-coupled device camera coupled to a small pin-hole allowing X-ray imaging was installed and numerous X-ray photos were taken in order to study the peculiarities of the ECRIS plasma structure.

The goal of NUMEN project is to access experimentally driven information on Nuclear Matrix Elements (NME) involved in the neutrinoless double beta decay (0νββ) by accurate measurements of the cross sections of heavy-ion induced double charge-exchange reactions. In particular, the (¹⁸O,¹⁸Ne) and (²⁰Ne,²⁰O) reactions are adopted as tools for β⁺β⁺and β⁻β⁻decays, respectively. The experiments are performed at INFN–Laboratory Nazionali del Sud (LNS) in Catania using the Superconducting Cyclotron to accelerate the beams and the MAGNEX magnetic spectrometer to detect the reaction products. The measured cross sections are very low, limiting the present exploration to few selected isotopes of interest in the context of typically low-yield experimental runs. In order to make feasible a systematic study of all the candidate nuclei, a major upgrade of the LNS facility is foreseen to increase the experimental yield by more than two orders of magnitude. To this purpose, frontier technologies are being developed for both the accelerator and the detection systems. An update description of the NUMEN project is presented here, focusing on recent achievements from the R&D activity.

The Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Sources (ECRISs) development is strictly related to the availability of new diagnostic tools, as the existing ones are not adequate to such compact machines and to their plasma characteristics. Microwave interferometry is a non-invasive method for plasma diagnostics and represents the best candidate for plasma density measurement in hostile environment. Interferometry in ECRISs is a challenging task mainly due to their compact size. The typical density of ECR plasmas is in the range 1011–1013 cm−3 and it needs a probing beam wavelength of the order of few centimetres, comparable to the chamber radius. The paper describes the design of a microwave interferometer developed at the LNS-INFN laboratories based on the so-called “frequency sweep” method to filter out the multipath contribution in the detected signals. The measurement technique and the preliminary results (calibration) obtained during the experimental tests will be presented.

The versatile ion source is an off-resonance microwave discharge ion source which produces a slightly overdense plasma at 2.45 GHz of pumping wave frequency extracting more than 60 mA proton beams and 50 mA He⁺ beams. DAEδALUS and IsoDAR experiments require high intensities for H₂⁺ beams to be accelerated by high power cyclotrons for neutrinos generation. In order to fulfill the new requirements, a new plasma chamber and injection system has been designed and manufactured for increasing the H₂⁺ beam intensity. In this paper the studies for the increasing of the H₂⁺/p ratio and for the design of the new plasma chamber and injection system will be shown and discussed together with the experimental tests carried out at Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare-Laboratori Nazionali del Sud (INFN-LNS) and at Best Cyclotron Systems test-bench in Vancouver, Canada.

This work describes the utilization of an injected ${{}^{23}\mathrm{Na}}^{1+}$ ion beam as a diagnostics of the helium plasma of a charge breeder electron cyclotron resonance ion source. The obtained data allows estimating the upper limit for the ion-ion collision mean-free path of the incident sodium ions, the lower limit of ion-ion collision frequencies for all charge states of the sodium ions and the lower limit of the helium plasma density. The ion-ion collision frequencies of high charge state ions are shown to be at least on the order of 1–10 MHz and the plasma density is estimated to be on the order of ${10}^{11}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-3}$ or higher. The experimental results are compared to simulations of the ${{}^{23}\mathrm{Na}}^{1+}$ capture into the helium plasma. The results indicate that the lower breeding efficiency of light ions in comparison to heavier elements is probably due to different capture efficiencies in which the in-flight ionization of the incident $1+$ ions plays a vital role.