Ion beam guiding with straight and curved Teflon tubes

In an effort to develop a flexible ion beam guiding scheme, the guiding capabilities of straight and curved Teflon tubes were tested with 8 keV Ar 8+ ions. The tubes used were about 50 mm long and of 1 mm/2 mm inner and outer diameters. One was straight, and the others were bent with different radii of curvature corresponding to bending angles from 9.6° to 26.7°. Transmission of several tens of per cent of the injected beam was observed for the curved tubes, while transmission through the tilted straight tube vanished when the tilt was more than 7°. This demonstrates the possibility of efficient ion beam guiding with flexible insulator tubes.