Abstract
Liquid metal ion sources offer potential improvement in lateral resolution over conventionally used gaseous sources for MeV microprobe applications because of their intrinsic brightnesses. The use of a Li liquid metal ion source is particularly attractive because of the increased sensitivity of lithium for detecting hydrogen (hydrogen profiling) and for detecting near-surface contaminants through high-resolution Rutherford backscattering spectrometry. However, the technical difficulty of occasional sparking between the needle and extraction electrode requires that the needle of the Li liquid metal ion source be rewetted before reignition can be effected; this problem makes Li liquid metal ion sources of the usual design risky for operation in the insulated high-voltage terminals of accelerators used in such applications. We have designed a reliable, long-lived, Li liquid-metal ion source which has provisions for overcoming this limitation. The design features and performance characteristics of the source are described in this article.
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