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:
Oct. 14, 2003
Filed:
Sep. 16, 2002
Thomas E. Felter, Livermore, CA (US);
Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, CA (US);
Abstract
An improved quadrupole mass spectrometer is described. The improvement lies in the substitution of the conventional hot filament electron source with a cold cathode field emitter array which in turn allows operating a small QMS at much high internal pressures then are currently achievable. By eliminating of the hot filament such problems as thermally “cracking” delicate analyte molecules, outgassing a “hot” filament, high power requirements, filament contamination by outgas species, and spurious em fields are avoid all together. In addition, the ability of produce FEAs using well-known and well developed photolithographic techniques, permits building a QMS having multiple redundancies of the ionization source at very low additional cost.