Design and development of a PXI based data acquisition & control system for floating cesiated tungsten dust driven negative ion source

A production mechanism for negative hydrogen ions using cesium coated tungsten dust particles in hydrogen plasma has been established at the Centre of Plasma Physics – Institute for Plasma Research (CPP-IPR). A new experimental setup has been developed for the production, extraction and acceleration of such H⁻ ions. The extraction and acceleration of H⁻ ions in this system require a high voltage supply and a floating configuration based plasma source. Due to the high complexity and safety concerns associated with the experimental system, a reliable and robust instrumentation and control system has been developed and is presented in this work. To monitor and control various experimental parameters, a PXI-based event-driven interlock and a requirement-based continuous data acquisition and control system have been designed, developed, and commissioned, incorporating fiber optic links. The software for the control sequences, including monitoring and acquisition, has been developed and implemented on a Real-Time Controller using LabVIEW 2020. The system has been tested, and some experiments have been conducted. Experimental results, along with the test results of the system components, are presented in the paper.