IMPROVED DC GUN INSULATOR ASSEMBLY

Many user fa­cil­i­ties such as syn­chrotron ra­di­a­tion light sources and free elec­tron lasers re­quire ac­cel­er­at­ing struc­tures that sup­port elec­tric fields of 10-100 MV/m, es­pe­cial­ly at the start of the ac­cel­er­a­tor chain where ce­ram­ic in­su­la­tors are used for very high gra­di­ent DC guns. These in­su­la­tors are dif­fi­cult to man­u­fac­ture, re­quire long com­mis­sion­ing times, and often ex­hib­it poor re­li­a­bil­i­ty. Two tech­ni­cal ap­proach­es to solv­ing this prob­lem will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed. First­ly, in­vert­ed ce­ram­ics offer so­lu­tions for re­duced gra­di­ents be­tween the elec­trodes and ground. An in­vert­ed de­sign will be pre­sent­ed for 350 kV, with max­i­mum gra­di­ents in the range of 5-10 MV/m. Sec­ond­ly, novel ce­ram­ic man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cess­es will be stud­ied, in order to pro­tect triple junc­tion lo­ca­tions from emis­sion, by ap­ply­ing a coat­ing with a bulk re­sis­tiv­i­ty. The pro­cess­es for cre­at­ing this coat­ing will be op­ti­mized to pro­vide pro­tec­tion as well as be used to coat a ce­ram­ic with an ap­pro­pri­ate gra­di­ent in bulk re­sis­tiv­i­ty from the vac­u­um side to the air side of an HV stand­off ce­ram­ic cylin­der. Ex­am­ple in­su­la­tor de­signs are being com­put­er mod­elled, and in­su­la­tor sam­ples are being man­u­fac­tured and test­ed