Louis Brown | Britannica

Louis Brown

Contributor

BIOGRAPHY

Emeritus staff member, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C.

Primary Contributions (1)

Figure 1: An electron bombardment ion source in cross section. An electron beam is drawn from the filament and accelerated across the region in which the ions are formed and toward the electron trap. An electric field produced by the repeller forces the ion beam from the source through the exit slit.

Mass spectrometry, analytic technique by which chemical substances are identified by the sorting of gaseous ions in electric and magnetic fields according to their mass-to-charge ratios. The instruments used in such studies are called mass spectrometers and mass spectrographs, and they operate on…