Real energy spread of ions produced in vacuum spark-discharge plasma

Dynamical behavior of ions in a radio frequency spark ion source

“…Several mechanisms concerning the ion extraction in a spark source mass spectrometer have been described in the literature (4)(5)(6)(7). Just as in the case of laser ionization (8, 9), most of the attention is paid to the hydrodynamic acceleration of ions and to the acceleration of ions in a self-consistent electric field, because these two mechanisms have been thought to be the defining processes of ion extraction (3,7).…”

“…Several mechanisms concerning the ion extraction in a spark source mass spectrometer have been described in the literature (4)(5)(6)(7). Just as in the case of laser ionization (8, 9), most of the attention is paid to the hydrodynamic acceleration of ions and to the acceleration of ions in a self-consistent electric field, because these two mechanisms have been thought to be the defining processes of ion extraction (3,7). Although acceleration in an external field with respect to the spark plasma has been rejected as a possible way of ion acceleration by some authors (7), it regained our attention when we were able to simulate ion trajectories in the spark source with the aid of SIMION (10), a powerful lens analysis program.…”

“…Just as in the case of laser ionization (8, 9), most of the attention is paid to the hydrodynamic acceleration of ions and to the acceleration of ions in a self-consistent electric field, because these two mechanisms have been thought to be the defining processes of ion extraction (3,7). Although acceleration in an external field with respect to the spark plasma has been rejected as a possible way of ion acceleration by some authors (7), it regained our attention when we were able to simulate ion trajectories in the spark source with the aid of SIMION (10), a powerful lens analysis program. With this program it was possible to explore the dynamic behavior of ions due to the residual oscillations of the electrical potential during a spark discharge.…”