2022 Volume 18 Issue 4 Pages 259-268
The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University is the world’s first accelerator facility where a liquid lithium charge stripper (LLCS) is used. Charge strippers play a critical role in many high intensity heavy ion accelerators. Because of the anticipated beam intensity to produce 400 kW heavy ion beams, a conventional material such as a carbon foil cannot be used as the charge stripper at FRIB, and thus a liquid lithium film has been selected as its baseline charge stripper. The LLCS development at FRIB has been progressing in a step-by-step basis, starting with collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory for proof-of-principle experiments, and finally has reached its commissioning with heavy ion beams. Its performance as a charge stripper for high power heavy ion beams was found to be excellent. A high power test during the beam commissioning shows no issue in its thermal performance.
