Guiding and blocking of highly charged ions through a single glass capillary

Highly charged ions produced in an electron beam ion trap, Iq+, q = 10-50, were transmitted through a tapered glass capillary having diameter of 50μm at the end. We found that for a particular beam current, there exists an optimum tilting angle of the capillary in which a steady output of ions is observed, while for smaller angles, the ion counts first rise, then gradually decay on a time scale of minutes. In the case of steady transmission, the charge state distribution is found to be slightly towards the lower side.