Review of ion-source developments for radioactive ion-beam facilities

The ion-sources dedicated to the production of radioactive ion beams (RIB) shall be highly efficient, selective and fast. This efficiency is mandatory since only limited amounts of radionuclides are produced. Chemical selectivity is needed to confine other elements near to the production site and to suppress isobaric contaminants. Eventually, the ion-source shall only decay the radioisotopes by a fraction of their half-life to reduce decay losses. The world wide spread RIB facilities came up with a large variety of solutions to meet part or all of these requirements such as: ion traps, surface, plasma, sputtering, electron cyclotron resonance and laser ion- sources. In this review, the latest developments are presented and their applications to charge states breeder systems proposed for post-acceleration are discussed. (59 refs).