A simple template-based transfer method to fabricate Bradbury–Nielsen gates with uniform tension for ion mobility spectrometry

A Bradbury–Nielsen gate (BNG) consists of two interleaved and electrically isolated sets of wires. It is usually used to gate or modulate ion beams. Uniformly tense wires can remain parallel, equidistant, and coplanar over a wide working temperature range, which is critical to reliable BNG performance. Hence, this study analyzes the non-uniform tension of wires wound using traditional sequential winding methods in which the elastic modulus of the metal wire is much larger than that of the insulation substrate. To address this problem, a simple and reliable template-based transfer method is developed. First, a template with large elastic modulus is used to fabricate a wire mesh with uniform tension. The mesh is then transferred to the substrate. Theoretically, this method reduces the non-uniformity of the tension in wires to less than 2%; therefore, it is used to construct a BNG with stainless steel wire, a stainless steel template, and a printed circuit board substrate. The BNG was installed in our homebuilt ion mobility spectrometer. To confirm that the performance of the BNG meets the requirements of portable ion mobility spectrometry, signal intensity and resolution (approximately 30) were experimentally determined.