Developing a penning ionization gauge ion source with a filament for a compact ion microbeam system

Abstract

We present the development of a penning ionization gauge ion source with a filament (F-PIG) for producing submicron ion beams in a compact ion microbeam system. The conventional penning ionization gauge ion source (PIG) represents a viable choice for microbeam system due to its compact size and low power consumption. However, directly utilizing a PIG for generating submicron ion beam poses challenges, primarily from significant energy spread, causing substantial aberrations. Considering this, this study proposes a solving the generation of low-voltage discharge plasma, achieved using low-energy electrons from a filament by focusing on the development of F-PIG for this purpose. Experimental results demonstrate that the F-PIG exhibits considerable promise an ion source to forming submicron beam within a compact ion microbeams system. These findings indicate that F-PIG can effectively reduce the width of the beam energy spread, making it a valuable asset for microbeam applications.