PRODUCTION OF COLD HOT METAL CLUSTER IONS - A MODIFIED LASER VAPORIZATION SOURCE

Metal clusters are generated via laser vaporization technique, but in contrast to common designs metal wires are used as target materials. This allowed to simplify the construction of the source dramatically, because buffer gas leakage and hole drilling by the laser beam could easily be prevented. The source produces neutral clusters as well as charged clusters (negative and positive). Time-of-flight mass spectrometry was used to characterize these three different cluster distributions for two target materials: silver and gold.