Electron stimulated desorption of negative ions: A time-of-flight experiment

We present a setup for stimulated desorption experiments of negative ions using low energy incident electrons and time-of-flight identification of the desorbed ions. It consists of a pulsed electron gun, an electrostatic focusing system, and a channel plate detector setup. Electron beams down to sub-eV energies can be used due to electrostatic shielding and the compensation of the earth's magnetic field by a set of Helmholtz coils. The main advantage is the large acceptance for ions of all masses, energies, and desorption angles at the same time, which keeps measuring time reasonably short and allows us to gain information before degeneration of the irradiated sample occurs, even if weak desorption channels are investigated. We demonstrate the power of our setup with first results from a boron doped, (100)-oriented diamond sample, which is partly oxidized and partly hydrogenated with some water contaminations on it. Different binding states of oxygen are disclosed clearly by different desorption thresholds. The C-O binding on oxidized diamond forms a carbonyl group. The 1b(2) orbital of water can be seen in a O desorption threshold. The yield of negative hydrogen desorption shows a linear increase for incident electron energies higher than 13 eV. It results from a dipolar dissociation as has been published previously. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.