Ion trapping techniques

Ion confinement uses two main techniques. The first relies on the combined action of a magnetic field and an electrostatic field. The Penning trap is one example. The second uses purely electric fields and gave rise to the Paul trap.

Containment devices offer greater sensitivity than competing devices, thanks to their ability to accumulate charges created in situ, and to the long interaction times made possible by storage. Thus, the very first applications of confinement devices, whether "magnetic" or "radio-frequency", involved the production of highly sensitive vacuum gauges. For the study of reactive collisions, the possibility of creating an ion target whose interaction with a gas can be studied makes it possible to create a device that competes with traditional methods based on the study of the interaction of an ion beam with a gas target.