Secondary Electron Focusing to Retain High-Resolution Measurements in Linear-Electric- Field Time-of-Flight Telescopes

Linear-electric-field time-of-flight (LEF TOF) analyzers are useful for space applications of mass spectrometry. Particles pass through a thin Carbon foil and enter the analyzer with one of several charge states, typically different than that of the incident ion. High mass resolution (m/Δ m~ 100) is obtained for positive charge states whose isochronous flight times are not dependent on the particle's energy, while low mass resolution (m/Δ m~ 10) is recorded for charge states that travel straight through the analyzer and are affected by collisional scattering when passing through the Carbon foil. When the flight times of different masses and charge states are recorded by the same anode, it is sometimes difficult to extract the lower-count-rate isochronous measurements. We present a technique for overcoming this issue using a modified instrument geometry combined with a novel position-sensitive detector. This modified geometry of a cylindrically symmetric LEF TOF analyzer has inner electrostatic rings, which focus secondary electrons created by isochronous ion impact. Electrons are guided toward the central area of a position-sensitive serpentine delay line anode, and position and flight time information are processed by a time-to-digital converter in a field-programmable-gate-array chip. Neutrals and negative ions will impact the anode in regions other than the center, and can be separated out by their position. Using these advanced electronics with the modified design, the high-resolution measurement can be extracted from the data as a focused peak at the center of the anode, providing improved measurements without an increase in the instrument size. We report the results from simulations and laboratory measurements used to experimentally confirm the expected performance of this design.