The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 15, 1988
Filed:
Dec. 29, 1986
Randall L Kubena, Agoura, CA (US);
John W Reeds, Thousand Oaks, CA (US);
Hughes Aircraft Company, Los Angeles, CA (US);
Abstract
A secondary ion mass spectrometry system and method is described which operates several orders of magnitude more quickly than previous systems, and captures information that might previously have been missed. A parallel detection approach is used which simultaneously monitors all secondary ion masses of interest, as opposed to prior serial approaches which sense only one ion mass at a time. The secondary ions are spatially separated according to mass and sensed by a detector array. An ion-electron converter and amplifier, implemented as a microchannel plate assembly, is preferably interfaced between the mass separator and detector. The detector preferably uses an array of wires to collect charge emitted by the microchannel plate. The wires are coupled to output lines by an encoding scheme which allows many fewer output lines to be employed than there are wires.