Ion energy analyser for laser-produced plasma

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Abstract
The theory and design of an ion energy analyser is described which is suitable for the measurement of energy distributions of ions expanding into vacuum from pulsed plasmas of short duration and small size. The analyser is capable of providing the energy distributions of all the ions streaming from the plasma when such a plasma is produced only once. The energy of the ions is obtained from their time of flight to a detector plate and the separation of the mixture of ions into separate beams for each species present is accomplished with an electrostatic field which varies in time and which directs each ion type on to a single collector continuously and independently of the ion energy. The performance of the analyser is demonstrated with a laser-produced carbon plasma giving C+, C2+, C3+ and C4+ ions with energies in the range 500 eV to 2 keV. The influence of self-space-charge is included.