Jp. Looney et al., MEASUREMENT OF CO PRESSURES IN THE ULTRAHIGH-VACUUM REGIME USING RESONANCE-ENHANCED MULTIPHOTON-IONIZATION TIME-OF-FLIGHT MASS-SPECTROSCOPY, Journal of vacuum science & technology. A. Vacuum, surfaces, and films, 11(6), 1993, pp. 3111-3120
An evaluation is made of measurements of CO pressures in the UHV regim
e using resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization coupled with time-of
-flight mass spectroscopy (REMPI-TOFMS). It has been found that once t
he REMPI-TOFMS system has been calibrated, quantitative measurement of
CO pressures as low as 10(-10) Pa is possible, even in overwhelming N
2 backgrounds. With compensation for laser pulse energy variations, we
find measurements with uncertainties of 10%-15% are possible for pres
sures down to 10(-7) Pa, and an ultimate detection limit for CO pressu
res of 10(-10) Pa for our measurement system. In this study, the REMPI
-TOFMS system was calibrated using a pressure division technique along
with a spinning rotor gage. The ionization of CO is achieved using 23
0 nm radiation to excite the B 1SIGMA+ state of CO at 10.8 eV via a tw
o-photon absorption and then ionizing some of the excited state molecu
les by the absorption of an additional photon from the laser beam.