Ablation Source

FIGURE 11.2 Schematic view of the laser ablation source. 

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Until about the 1990s, visible light played little intrinsic part in the development of mainstream mass spectrometry for analysis, but, more recently, lasers have become very important as ionization and ablation sources, particularly for polar organic substances (matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization, MALDI) and intractable solids (isotope analysis), respectively. 

Ions are produced in a Smalley-type laser ablation source [40,41]. The frequency-doubled output (532 nm) of a pulsed Nd YAG laser is loosely focused... 

Soft-landing drift tube. A last drift tube to be mentioned in this category is that of Davila and Verbeck, who used a laser ablation source to form ions and a drift tube to select ions for deposition onto substrates for preparative and developmental research of new materials. An inert gas atmosphere (e.g., 8 torr of He) was used to thermalize ions after ablation, and a drift tube was used to isolate selected ions. A unique split-ring design of ion optics at the end of the drift region was controlled to direct ions to a detector or to a substrate for soft landing. Ions at energies below 1 eV were landed onto substrates to explore chemistry of material sciences. 

FIGURE 3.2 Schematic of laser ablation source. Reprinted with permission from Ref. [ 17]. American Physical Society. 

Laser Ablation Source with a Quadrupole Mass Analyzer at Argonne National Lab... 

FIGURE 3.8 Schematics of previous (top) and recent (bottom) arrangement of the cluster deposition setup with laser ablation source and quadrupole mass spectrometer at the Argonne National Laboratory. Reprinted with permission from Refs. [Ill, 112]. Springer Science+Business Media. 

Buratto and coworkers use a laser ablation source to produce clusters and magnetic sector mass selector in their deposition instrument (see Fig. 3.13). The cluster intensity varies with materials and desired size for example, a current of about... 

Laser Ablation Source with an Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometer for Gas-Phase Investigations at the Technische Universitat Berlin... 

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