Archived - Rudimentary Accelerator Setup

[Joe Scherrer]

My electrostatic linear accelerator is now streaming out x-rays! It's a fairly deadbrain setup, consisting of a needle source and copper disk target in an NW40 tee, with potential supplied by an induction coil. So far I've only been accelerating atmospheric ions, as when I pulled the system down to high vacuum and tried to accelerate electrons, one of the glass feedthroughs failed and the induction coil arced to ground, instantly frying it. The next feedthroughs I build will be thick ceramic.

Operating parameters:
Pressure: ~30mTorr
Accelerating potential: 60kV
X-rays measured 3 in from output: 3500 cpm
X-rays measured 1 meter from output: 1000 cpm

Measuring was done with a Ludlum 3 meter and pancake probe. I measured about 500 cpm through the aluminum flange, so lead shielding was used during operation. A few millimeters of lead brought counts to background levels.

This is probably old hat for many of the old guard here, but I'm pretty excited! Now that I've proven acceleration capability, I can move on to my main project, a D-D linear accelerator.

[Richard Hull]

I have archived this because you are working by degrees and have presented this fact well in images and have supplied such data as you are currently capable of reporting. This bodes well for your future efforts and work. All the best.

Richard Hull

[chad ramey]

Congrats! Quite a nice step in the right direction and I'm sure a confidence booster. Before going straight to a D-D (I'm assuming beam on beam) you might want to try a beam on target system with a deuterium beam to a titanium target. Ti stores deuterium fairly well so you could use it to absorb and store deuterium and then hit it with a beam of deuterons.

Best of luck and keep up the documenting of your progress!

-Chad Ramey

[Joe Scherrer]

Actually, I was planning on doing beam on target, and you bring up a good point - I was planning on producing some deuterated Lithium hydroxide (it was the easiest to synthesize and most densely hydrogenated compound I could come up with - just drop some lithium in heavy water), but I know there are many other choices for deuterated targets as well.

Is there an easy way to synthesize deuterated titanium? The only way I know of is to heat it up to 300+ degrees C in vacuum and then cool it down in a deuterium atmosphere. Or could I deuterate it by bombarding it with deuterium atoms in an accelerator?

[Doug Coulter]

You might find the information at the end of the chapter in this link useful.
http://www.coultersmithing.com/OldStuff/pdfs/Pch8.pdf
Yes, you can embed D into Ti with an accelerator. For various reasons, the Ti wants to be a fairly thin layer on top of something that D won't diffuse through (Copper, silver) and which will help keep the target cool, so the D isn't released from it. A too thick layer seems not to work as well. A thin layer of Ti can be deposited by evap or sputtering; the main tool you need for that is a vacuum system, which you have.