Secondary Species Investigation of Low Energy Electrospray Plume Impacts

This work examines the emission of secondary charged species from a gold-plated target electrode when exposed to an ion-mode electrospray plume of EMI-BF ₄ from a single externally wetted tungsten emitter. A decelerating electrode is used with the electrospray source to probe ion energies from 30-1800 eV in the positive and negative mode. Next, the ion plume was fully suppressed using the decelerating electrode, allowing only neutral constituents of the plume to travel to the target and the emission of secondary charged species is observed. Time of flight mass spectrometry is used to confirm ion mode emission and proper deceleration of electrospray plume and was also used to detect the creation of secondary charged species created by decelerating the plume.