Dissociative attachment studies by negative‐ion time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry

Experiments using time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry for studying the formation of negative ions in dissociative attachment processes by electron impact are discussed. The problems of making accurate measurements of absolute partial cross‐sections have been solved using a combination of a new pulsed‐electron‐beam/pulsed‐ion‐extraction technique, the relative flow technique and a time‐of‐flight mass spectrometer. We also discuss some of the results obtained utilizing this method.