Development of long pulse arc driven ion source for iBNCT

Shibata, Takanori*; Sugimura, Takashi*; Ikegami, Kiyoshi*; Takagi, Akira*; Sato, Masaharu*; Naito, Fujio*; Okoshi, Kiyonori ; Hasegawa, Kazuo

Upgrade of beam current in the Linac of Ibaraki Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (iBNCT) is one of the most important requirements to realize clinical trial. By 2018, the measurement of the produced neutrons characteristics and the neutron irradiation experiment for living cells have been done by producing 8-MeV proton beam current at the beryllium target with average current up to 2 mA. In order to satisfy the original clinical trial conditions, 5 mA average beam current is required at the target. For this goal, peak beam current extracted from the ion source should be increased to 60 mA from the present 30 mA with duty factor up to more than 10% (pulse width up to 1 ms and repetition rate up to more than 100 Hz). Stability of the peak current in the macro pulse is also important for the clinical application.