Sensitivity of recoil ion time-of-flight analysers-A comparison

The sensitivities of three main categories of time-of-flight recoil ion mass analyzers were compared. Optimum beam parameters were determined for a given detector area by using the method of Lagrange multipliers. Dimensionless sensitivity coefficients were calculated for various analyzer geometric parameters. For a selected analyzer size and detector diameter, the sensitivity ratio of two different types of instruments can be read directly from Table 9, Table 10, Table 11. These ratios were tabulated for a given primary ion beam thickness and for a fixed, common resolution, respectively. Remarkable sensitivity increases can be obtained by using cylindrical reflectrons but at the expense of resolution loss. A specific example also illustrates the expected performances of three geometries belonging to the three analyzer categories.