Internship: Development of a secondary ionization time-of-flight...

The objective of this project is the development of a secondary-ionization time-of flight mass spectrometer that would provide earth scientists with valuable analytical capabilities not currently available at the USGS. The project comprises three main phases; the first phase involves building and testing a modular time-of-flight mass spectrometer system (already purchased). The second phase involves designing, building, testing and developing the secondary-ionization front-end for the instrument. The third phase of the project involves the exploration of potential applications of the instrument.