Investigation of the performances of an ECR charge breeder at ISOLDE: a study of the 1$^{+}\to$n$^{+}$ scenario for the next generation ISOL facilities.

The work described here was performed at ISOLDE, CERN. It aimed at giving an objective report of the current performances of Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) ion sources used as charge breeders, with both stable and radioactive ion beams. As a prerequisite, some technical developments were undertaken during the PhD thesis to improve the setup and to lead the tests with optimal conditions. A major part of these developments concerns beam purity, and is detailed in this thesis. Then, measurements of the charge breeding efficiencies of various isotopes were completed with different charge breeding modes. Results of these experiments are analyzed and compared to the current performances of other types of charge breeding methods. At the end, some conclusions are drawn from this investigation in perspective of the choices to make for future ISOL postaccelerators. The discussion is extended to the immediate application of ECR charge bred radioactive ion beams to physics experiments.