The glass-silicon-glass sandwich structured microplasma chip as the electron source of a micro mass spectrometer

Abstract

Micro mass spectrometer is one of the most powerful porta-ble analytical instruments. And the micro electron impact (EI) ionization source, which has crucial effects on micro mass spectrometer's performance, has been a research focus. In this study, a microplasma source as the electron source of the EI ionization source was developed to solve the difficulty in miniaturization on filament structure for conventional elec-tron source. The microplasma source was fabricated as a three wafer glass-silicon-glass sandwich with all the struc-tures realized in a highly doped silicon wafer via a deep reac-tive ion etch (DRIE) process. The microplasma source is 33 mm wide, 44 mm long, and 1.3 mm high.