Production of a microbeam of slow highly charged ions with a tapered glass capillary

The authors have developed a method to produce a microbeam of slow highly charged ions based on a self-organized charge-up inside a tapered glass capillary. A transmission of 8keV Ar8+ beam through the capillary 5cm long with 800∕24μm inlet/outlet inner diameters was observed stably for more than 1200s. The transmitted beam had the same size as the outlet with a beam density enhancement of approximately 10 and a divergence of ±5mrad. The initial beam was guided through a capillary tilted by as large as ±100mrad, and it still kept the incident charge.