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:
Apr. 13, 2010
Filed:
Oct. 06, 2006
Grigoriy N. Vernitskiy, San Francisco, CA (US);
Peter Gefter, South San Francisco, CA (US);
Lawrence Levit, Alamo, CA (US);
Grigoriy N. Vernitskiy, San Francisco, CA (US);
Peter Gefter, South San Francisco, CA (US);
Lawrence Levit, Alamo, CA (US);
MKS Instruments, Inc., Andover, MA (US);
Abstract
At least one orifice is added to an AC ionizer with nozzles and ionizing electrodes that are used to remove static charge. The orifice is placed in a location where electrostatic forces are weak and where gas ions can be easily extracted from the ionizer. Ionizer effectiveness is enhanced by recovering gas ions that are normally trapped between the nozzles and under a portion of the ionizer from which the nozzles project. Without the orifice properly positioned, the trapped gas ions are lost by recombination or grounding. With the orifice positioned in an area of weak electrostatic forces, more gas ions are available for discharging the charged object. The combined air consumption of nozzles plus at least one orifice is the same or less than nozzles alone would consume for a given discharge time.