Atomic Isobers

The main objective of this work has been to determine whether it is possible to use atomic reactions such as charge transfer reactions for practical application to the isobar separation problem of mass spectrometry. We know that the charge transfer reactions, in general the electron transfer reactions, have isobar selective properties. Therefore, different ionic species will interact with different probability with neutral atoms or molecules and hence some attenuation of the atomic isobars is possible. We have assessed the possibility for electron charge transfer reactions to be used for the atomic isobars separation. The separation of the isobars of Cs and Ba has been studied as an example of this case. Scattering losses have been found the main problem in limiting the attenuation. The magnitudes of the charge transfer cross sections at keV energies were measured experimentally. The experimental apparatus, it¿s construction and the measurements for the charge transfer cross sections for the reactions have been discussed.