Our VIRP chamber (for rapid vacuum instrument prototyping), is designed to perform experiments with new detector technologies, and provide a route to optimising the methodologies and technologies. Early work has been based around novel scintillators recently developed in Oxford [1,2], and also involved trialling the PImMS camera (for 3D ion imaging) for ultrafast pump-probe experiments [3] – see our blog for further information. New project work will continue to build in these directions.

[1] A new detector for mass spectrometry: Direct detection of low energy ions using a multi-pixel photon counter
Edward S. Wilman, Sara H. Gardiner, Andrei Nomerotski, Renato Turchetta, Mark Brouard and Claire Vallance
Rev. Sci. Instrum. 83, 013304 (2012).

[2] Improved direct detection of low-energy ions using a multipixel photon counter coupled with a novel scintillator
Winter, King, Brouard & Vallance
International Journal of Mass Spectrometry, 397–398, 27–31 (2016)

[3] Time-resolved multi-mass ion imaging: femtosecond UV-VUV pump-probe spectroscopy with the PImMS camera
Ruaridh Forbes, Varun Makhija, Kévin Veyrinas, Albert Stolow, Jason W. L. Lee, Michael Burt, Mark Brouard, Claire Vallance, Iain Wilkinson, Rune Lausten, Paul Hockett
arXiv 1702.00744 (2017); The Journal of Chemical Physics 147, 013911 (2017), DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4978923