Pulsed cesium gun for characterization of a multireflecting time-of-flight mass analyzer

A procedure for development of a compact pulsed cesium ion gun to form ion beams with specified parameters in a low ion energy range is described. The heated cesium aluminate serves as a cesium ion source. The gun was used as a test ion source to characterize a novel time-of-flight analyzer. The calculated and measured parameters of the beam formed by a gun are given. The specific features of the gun operation in the short (below 1 μs) pulse mode are considered. The short pulse generation procedure was simulated using the SIMION program. It is shown that the effect of bunching is essential in time focusing of ion packets. However this does not allow pulses shorter than 100 ns to be obtained and considerably increases the spread of kinetic ion energies.