The pictures are a side and end view of an ORNL Helicon RF antenna as installed on the Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory (ASPL) experiment at Johnson Space Center. The antenna surrounds a quartz tube with plasma inside. The helicon operates in the 10-20 MHz range and is the plasma ionization source.

ORNL has a similar antenna that is on our experiment for doing helicon source plasma studies.

Helicons are also useful for plasma processing applications such as semiconductor manufacturing and waste separation, and are similar to antennas used in the plasma isotope separation.