Applicability of quadrupole mass spectrometer to a very small amount of isotope analysis with resonance ionization mass spectroscopy

In resonance ionizations mass spectrometry (RIMS) with a time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOF-MS), some difficulties arise in an analysis of a very small amount of isotopes of interest through interference of secondary ions produced by collision of a large amount of resonant ions with reflection and extraction electrodes and sometimes cluster ions produced under intense laser ablation of target materials, which have many kinds of mass/charge ratios. In this study, we have tried to overcome the above problem by replacing the TOF-MS to a quadrupole mass spectrometer (QMS). Here are presented the preliminary results obtained from basic experiments with a prototype QMS-RIMS. (author)