New Material with Softlanding MS

One of the group’s focus is to develop and evaluate the capabilities of mass spectrometry and ion drift tubes for isolation of monodisperse species from heterogeneous ion populations. Gas-phase clusters, fullerenes, copper, and gold, are being generated using pulsed-laser vaporization. Metal carbides have been generated utilizing the Smalley nozzle. These techniques, which typically produce an assortment of cluster sizes and compositions, all involve vaporization of a target followed by condensation of the gas-phase atoms to form clusters. These novel frontends are being coupled to a Paul ion trap for compositional analysis and characterization of cluster formation.