Innovation by Assam scientists

By our staff reporter

GUWAHATI, Oct 27: An innovative technique has been developed by the scientists of Centre of Plasma Physics, Institute for Plasma Research (CPP-IPR), Sopur in collaboration with the Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhigar for the production of negative hydrogen ions.

Negative hydrogen ions have a wide variety of significant applications in thermonuclear fusion reactor for energy generation, particle accelerators, surface modifications and biomedical fields. Negative hydrogen ion-based neutral beam injection is one of the important methods to heat plasma inside the fusion reactor. However, the existing negative ion source configuration has limitations in terms of production, extraction etc. The negative hydrogen ions are produced almost uniformly around the dust column and fill the plasma volume. As a result, it is not required to reverse the direction of these ions for extraction unlike conventiol negative ion source. As the micron sized cesium coated tungsten dust are used as low work function surface for negative hydrogen ion production, considering some advantages, the present source can be converted to a compact efficient ion source in future.  The scientists involved with this novel work are Dr. Bharat Kakati, Dr. Siddhartha Sankar Kausik and Dr. Bipul Kumar Saikia (project leader) of CPP-IPR & Dr. Maik Bandyopadhyay and Prof. Predhiman Krishan Kaw of IPR, Gandhigar. It needs to be mentioned that this group has already patented this work.