On September 12, Prof. SUN Liangting, a researcher from the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, received the Brightness Award at the International Conference on Ion Sources (ICIS) held at the University of Oxford.

Prof. SUN shared this year's award with Dr. GUO Junwei, a former senior engineer at IMP, from the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) Laboratory at Michigan State University. They were recognized for their breakthroughs with superconducting Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) ion source development and performance.

Highly-charged ECR ion source is one of the key technologies for heavy-ion accelerators. Superconducting ECR ion sources represent the cutting-edge technology for generating high-current, highly-charged heavy-ion beams.

Prof. SUN has led the team in Lanzhou conducted a series of pioneering studies on third-generation highly-charged ECR ion sources, setting and maintaining world records for beam intensity of highly-charged ions generated by ion sources. The team has recently developed the world’s first fourth-generation ECR ion source operating at 45 GHz, featuring original use of Nb₃Sn superconducting magnet technology in ECR ion source development.

The series of high-performance superconducting ECR ion sources developed at IMP have not only created advanced experimental conditions for heavy-ion physics and applications in China, but also contributed enormously to the global advancement of ECR ion source technology.

This is the second time the award has been presented to scholars engaged in ECR ion source research since its establishment.

The Brightness Award has been established by ICIS since 2003 to honor global scholars who have made innovative and significant achievements in the fields of ion source physics and technology. The recipients are selected through a two-round review by an international awards committee.

ICIS is a comprehensive biennial academic conference in the global ion source field, hosted in rotation across Asia, America, and Europe. Each conference attracts about 200 to 300 scholars and instrument exhibitors from around the world to exchange and discuss the latest research progress and future developments in ion source science, technology, and applications.

Figure 1. The chairman of the awards committee, the conference chairman, and the representative of the award sponsors with Prof. SUN and Dr. GUO. (Image from IMP)

Figure 2. Certificate of the award. (Image from IMP)