Calibration of relative sensitivity factors for impact ionization detectors with high-velocity silicate microparticles

Impact ionization mass spectrometers, e.g., the Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) onboard the Cassini spacecraft can quantitatively analyze the chemical composition of impacting particles, if the ionization efficiencies of the elements to be quantified are appropriately calibrated. Although silicates are an abundant dust species inside and outside the Solar System, an experimental calibration was not available for elements typically found in silicates. We performed such a calibration by accelerating orthopyroxene dust of known composition with a modified Van de Graaff accelerator to velocities of up to 37.9 km s−1 and subsequent analyses by a high resolution impact ionization mass spectrometer, the Large Area Mass Analyzer (LAMA). The orthopyroxene dust, prepared from a natural rock sample, contains ∼90% orthopyroxene and ∼10% additional mineral species, such as clinopyroxene, spinel, amphibole, olivine and glasses, which are present as impurities within the orthopyroxene, due to inclusion or intergrowth. Hence, the dust material can be regarded as a multi-mineral mixture. After analyses, we find that most particle data cluster at a composition ascribed to pure orthopyroxene. Some data scatter is caused by stochastic effects, other data scatter is caused by the chemically different mineral impurities. Our data indicate that these minor mineral phases can be recognized within a multi-mineral mixture. Here, for the first time, we present experimentally derived relative sensitivity factors (RSFs) for impact ionization mass spectroscopy of silicates, enabling the quantitative determination of the composition of cosmic dust grains. Orthopyroxene data were used to infer RSFs for Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Ti, Fe and K, for particles with radii ranging from 0.04 μm to 0.2 μm and velocities between 19 and 37.9 km s−1, impacting on a Rh-target.