A NOVEL HIGH-FREQUENCY DISCHARGE FOR QUANTITATIVE SPECTROSCOPY

A new type of capacitively coupled high-frequency discharge is operated using special hollow electrodes of the metal under study. Both electrodes act as cathodes depending on the momentary polarity of the electric high-frequency field. Effective sputtering and excitation are achieved by this discharge. Several metals used as electrodes give sufficiently stable yields of singly and even doubly ionized atoms suitable for the determination of atomic data. In particular, this source has proved to be very useful for branching ratio measurements as an essential requirement for the establishment of accurate sets of transition probabilities.