Ion pump

[6] A swirling cloud of electrons produced by an electric discharge is temporarily stored in the anode region of a Penning trap.

The freshly sputtered chemically active cathode material acts as a getter that then evacuates the gas by both chemisorption and physisorption resulting in a net pumping action.

[8] Both the pumping rate and capacity of such capture methods are dependent on the specific gas species being collected and the cathode material absorbing it.

The tantalum cathode serves as a high-inertia crystal lattice structure for the reflection and burial of neutrals, increasing pumping effectiveness of inert gas ions.

Ion pumps are commonly used in ultra-high vacuum (UHV) systems, as they can attain ultimate pressures less than 10−11 mbar.

These advantages make ion pumps well-suited for use in scanning probe microscopy, molecular beam epitaxy and other high-precision apparatuses.

Recent work has suggested that free radicals escaping from ion pumps can influence the results of some experiments.