PSEUDORANDOM TIME-OF-FLIGHT ANALYSIS WITH A TIME-OF-FLIGHT MASS-SPECTROMETER

We describe the advantages of using the pseudorandom time-of-flight (T OF) technique for measuring velocity distributions together with the T OF mass spectrometric detection. The basic idea of the method is the s uccessive measurement of abundance spectra with the TOF mass spectrome ter correlated with each channel of the pseudorandom sequence. Extract ion of the intensities of each mass and subsequent cross correlation w ith the pseudorandom sequence leads to the TOF and thus the velocity d istributions. The proposed technique can substantially reduce the data acquisition time in systems for which many different reaction product s are expected such as in cluster research. An illustration of the eff iciency is presented using angular resolved TOF distributions for prod ucts of the reaction of sodium clusters Na-n with O-2. (C) 1996 Americ an Institute of Physics.