In situ characterization of a cold and short pulsed molecular beam by femtosecond ion imaging

In this paper we report on the in situ characterization of the cold velocity distribution of a pulsed molecular beam produced by a novel cantilever piezo valve. The velocity distribution is measured at various temporal positions within the pulsed expansion using femtosecond velocity map ion imaging. It is shown that the universal detection of molecules by multi-photon femtosecond velocity map ion imaging can provide directly the velocity distribution with excellent velocity resolution. The novel cantilever piezo valve can operate both in continuous (DC) and pulsed mode without any modification using the same drive electronics. Pulsed operation was tested at repetition rates of 20 Hz, 1 kHz and 5 kHz and a conical nozzle 200 μm in diameter. The cantilever valve produces a pulsed molecular beam of translationally cold molecules at modest backing pressures of about 6 bar. At low to medium repetition rates (20–1000 Hz) the pulsed piezo valve produces pulses of 12–40 μs duration of translationally cold seeded beams of helium and neon with speed ratios up to S = 135 (20 Hz, 0.1% CD3I in neon) and S = 55 (1 kHz). At the highest tested repetition rate of 5 kHz, the speed ratio obtained for the same seeded beam is reduced to about S = 45. This is still more than a factor of two better than the speed ratio S = 21 measured for a continuous beam produced with the same nozzle at 0.5 bar backing pressure. The cold velocity distribution of the pulsed beam expansion as compared to a continuous beam expansion is beneficial for improved spatial resolution in velocity map ion imaging experiments at high repetition rates of 1–5 kHz. The cantilever piezo valve has a simple design and may find broad applicability in areas where short gas pulses are warranted because of limited pumping speed, the effective use of (expensive) samples or the production of translationally and internally cold molecular beams at high repetition rate. When operating the piezo valve at high backing pressures of 15–30 bar extensive clustering of the low percentage (0.1–0.5%) seeded molecules in He and Ne carrier gasses can be produced of interest for cluster research.