The Isotopx NGX and ATONA Faraday amplifiers

Abstract

We installed the new Isotopx ATONA Faraday cup detector amplifiers on an Isotopx NGX mass spectrometer at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in early 2018. The ATONA is a capacitive transimpedance amplifier, which differs from the traditional resistive transimpedance amplifier used on most Faraday detectors for mass spectrometry. Instead of a high-gain resistor, a capacitor is used to accumulate and measure charge. The advantages of this architecture are a very low noise floor, rapid response time, stable baselines, and very high dynamic range. We show baseline noise measurements and measurements of argon from air and cocktail gas standards to demonstrate the capabilities of these amplifiers. The ATONA exhibits a noise floor better than a traditional 1013 Ω amplifier in normal noble gas mass spectrometer usage, superior gain and baseline stability, and an unrivaled dynamic range that makes it practical to measure beams ranging in size from below 10−16 to above 10−9 A using a single amplifier.