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January 5, 2010 9:38am UTC

Modelling of ion transit in oscillating electric field

Hi,

I've recently spent quite a bit of time using SIMION to model the trajectories of ions as they pass through fine wire meshes, upon which electric potentials are applied (such that a small DC electric field is generated). In addition, I am very interested in plotting the trajectories the ions take when a high frequency oscillating voltage is superimposed on the DC potentials which are applied to the grids.

The SIMION modelling has generated some very interesting results, and I would like to validate them by performing a similar analysis using COMSOL.

I recently attended the Intensive COMSOL course, held at Hatfield University, UK. The course only briefly covered the Particle Tracing option in the Post Processing screen, however from the little amount that we covered I was left with the impression that COMSOL will only plot the trajectory that an ion would take under steady state field conditions (after a solution to the model has been generated), and would not be able to calculate the trajectory of an ion under an oscillating electric field.

I am curious to find out whether my understanding of the particle tracing option is correct, and I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has succesfully used COMSOL to plot ion trajectories in non steady state field conditions.

Regards,

Jon Atkinson

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