A mass spectrometer is a powerful analytical techniques used for both qualitative and quantitative analysis of substances, on the other hand, it is still bulky, expensive, high vacuum demanding, and high power consuming. Owing to such natures, it is not suitable for in situ analysis or monitoring. Recently, progress has been achieved on miniaturized or micro-machined MSs with various mass-filtering methods which considerably reduces disadvantages of conventional MS systems. Generally, a miniature or micro-machined MS systems consist of small and precise micro-machined components of conventional MS system such as ion sources, mass analyzers or ion detectors. In the thesis, it is demonstrated the triode-type field emitter using CNTs and the μ-TOFMS.
The μ-TOFMS consists of two components: a triode-type field emitter for ionization and an ion separator with the repeller, the acceleration electrodes, and the flight tube, and they are fabricated with MEMS technologies individually and assembled. As a cold-cathode, a field emitter with CNT is the promising electron sources with advantages of compact size, low power consumption due to the absence of heating elements, excellent durability and high electron emission density, compared to conventional thermionic electron sources. It is successful to detect ions of argon and methyl iodine signals with the μ-TOFMS. It is practically proved with preliminary experiments of ionization and mass spectrum tests with argon and methyl iodide, theoretical analysis and FE modeling in this thesis.
