BURLE awarded patent for resistive glass drift tubes for ion mobility spectrometry applications

BURLE Electro-Optics, Inc., a PHOTONIS Group company, announces having been awarded the patent 7,081,618 for resistive glass drift tubes in ion mobility spectrometers.

This is commonly used in airport and homeland security applications. This technology offers unique capabilities and advantages for analytical instrument designers and manufacturers. The novel BURLE products feature simplification in manufacturing with single-piece construction and significant reduction in number of parts used in such spectrometers. These glass tubes are used in place of stack assemblies with many metal and ceramic annular components. These solutions provide more cost-effective assemblies, more uniform electric fields, and improve the performance and reliability compared to traditional methods.

BURLE's new technology offers a wide array of shapes and sizes including tubes, sheets, washers and custom shapes to fit any requirement at lower cost. In addition, these Ion Guide products are available in a variety of electrical contact and lead configurations. Mechanical flange, grid and mesh interfaces are also available.

Typical applications include Ion Guides, Ion Mirrors, Voltage Dividers, Conversion Dynodes, Reflectron Lenses, Drift Tubes for Ion Mobility Spectrometers and more.

These precision products are manufactured from a proprietary lead silicate glass that has been doped to produce a resistive surface. The devices can be custom designed with one or more resistive areas. Resistivity can be varied over three orders of magnitude in order to optimize current flow and electric field strength.