Abstract
A laser ablation ion source (LAS) is a powerful tool by which diverse species of ions can be produced for mass spectrometer calibration or surface study applications. It is necessary to frequently shift the laser position on the target to selectively ablate materials in a controlled manner, and to mitigate degradation of the target surface caused by ablation. An alternative to mounting the target onto a rotation wheel or x − y translation stage, is to shift the laser spot position with a final reflection from a motorized kinematic mirror mount. Such a system has been developed, assembled and characterized with a two axis motorized mirror and various metal targets. In the system presented here, ions are ablated from the target surface and guided by a 90° quadrupole bender to a Faraday cup where the ion current is measured. Spatially resolved scans of the target are produced by actuating the mirror motors, thus moving the laser spot across the target, and performing synchronous measurements of the ion current to construct 2D images of a target surface which can be up to 50 mm in diameter. The spatial resolution of the system has been measured by scanning the interfaces between metals such as steel and niobium, where it was demonstrated that the LAS can selectively ablate an area of diameter ≈50 μm. This work informs the development of subsequent LAS systems, that are intended to serve as multi-element ion sources for commercial and custom-built time-of-flight mass spectrometers, or to selectively study surface specific regions of samples.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 116763 |
Journal | International Journal of Mass Spectrometry |
Volume | 472 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 2022 |
Externally published | Yes |
Funding
The authors acknowledge support from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, the Arthur B. McDonald Institute, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada , MITACS, and the McGill Summer Undergraduate Research Award program. The authors would like to thank the nEXO group at Carleton University for providing the laser used in this work. The authors acknowledge support from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, the Arthur B. McDonald Institute, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, MITACS, and the McGill Summer Undergraduate Research Award program. The authors would like to thank the nEXO group at Carleton University for providing the laser used in this work.
Keywords
- Laser ablation ion source
- Mass spectrometer calibration
- Mass spectrometry