Design and fabrication of a time-of-flight spectrometer for studies of multiple ionization of gases by charged particle impact

Abstract

A time-of-flight spectrometer has been designed and fabricated for measuring the charge state distributions of target ions produced in collisions of keV-electrons with gaseous target atoms/molecules. The design details of the spectrometer and the description of experimental procedures for optimizing various parameters are presented and discussed. The working principle of the spectrometer, its time- and mass-focussing conditions, transmissions and detection efficiency etc. are given. A few typical test runs on multiple ionization of Ne and Ar gas atoms are illustrated. These spectra are found to yield the time resolution of about 10 ns for Ar4+ ion peak in 24.0 keV e- - Ar collisions while the mass resolution of the spectrometer is obtained about 10% at mass m = 20.