3D Three-fluid Modeling of lon Separation Phenomenon in Vacuum Arc lon Sources

The separation phenomenon of different species has been widely observed in experiments in vacuum arc ion source. In order to study the physical mechanism of the ion separation, our group establishes a 3D three-fluid model based on MHD. In the model, different kinds of species are considered as different fluids. The physical characteristics of different ions and atoms of the same species are considered to be the same, which is consistent with the experimental conclusion. In addition, the ionization and recombination processes between ions and atom are also considered. The simulation results show that the species with lighter mass and larger charge-mass ratio have faster speed, higher temperature and more uniform distribution of parameters. Moreover, the physical characteristics of each species are more different in places with low species number density. The model can provide theoretical guidance for studying the complex physical characteristics of vacuum arc plasma.