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 Tables 9 to 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.