Appearance Potentials and Kinetic Energies of Ions from N2, CO, and NO

A recently developed method has permitted the measurement of excess translational energy of ions formed in a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. The method, in conjunction with the RPD technique for determining appearance potentials, has been applied to the electron-impact study of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and nitric oxide. A total of 31 different ionization processes have been observed and identified, several of which had not been previously reported in the literature.