Advanced ECR sources for highly charged ions

New technologies for next generation Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Sources (ECRIS) are under development in many laboratories in the world, in order to achieve higher charge states and higher currents, especially for heavy ion beams. In particular, in the last few years the efforts have been concentrated on the coupling of high power high frequency microwaves (e.g. 10 kW, 28 GHz), on the study and the development of complex magnetic systems for an adequate plasma confinement, on the design of extractors able to minimize the emittance of heavy ion beams at high current level (tens of milliamperes). The first injection of a high power (6 kW) of a 28 GHz wave in a B-min ECRIS was achieved in the SERSE superconducting source at INFN-LNS, Catania in 2000. High currents of ions were produced, both in pulsed and do modes. Since then, other relevant improvements in the ECR source technology have been carried out. The talk will describe the major developments of ECRIS science and technology in Europe, Asia and US. The conceptual design of a high magnetic field superconducting ECR ion source, named GyroSerse will be also described. This multipurpose ECR ion source aims to: - the production of very high charge states of heavy ion beams (i.e. up to 1 eμA of U⁶⁰⁺ and 5 pμA of light ions up to Ar¹⁶⁺ in cw mode). - the production of high current of highly charged ions both in cw and pulsed mode such as 1 emA of Xe²⁰⁺ ´ beams or 0.3 emA of U³⁰⁺ ´ beams in dc mode and 6 emA of U²⁸⁺ in pulsed mode (with a pulse duration of 200 μs). For injection into the accelerator, all these beams should fulfill the following requirements: energy from 2.5 to 5.0 keV/nucleon, emittance lower than 200 π mm.mrad and high reliability.