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Eli Flaxer Citation: Rev. Sci. Instrum. 82, 025111 (2011); doi: 10.1063/1.3555340 View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3555340 View Table of Contents: http://rsi.aip.org/resource/1/RSINAK/v82/i2 Published by the American Institute of Physics.
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(Received 24 November 2010; accepted 26 January 2011; published online 25 February 2011) In electron ionization source, electrons are produced through thermionic emission by heating a wire lament, accelerating the electrons by high voltage, and ionizing the analyzed molecules. In such a system, one important parameter is the lament emission current that determines the ionization rate; therefore, one needs to regulate this current. On the one hand, fast responses control is needed to keep the emission current constant, but on the other hand, we need to protect the lament from damage that occurs by large laments current transients and overheating. To control our lament current and emission current, we developed a digital circuit based on a digital signal processing controller that has several modes of operation. We used a smart algorithm that has a fast response to a small signal and a slow response to a large signal. In addition, we have several protective measures that prevent the current from reaching unsafe values. 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3555340]
I. INTRODUCTION II. DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
Electron ionization (EI) is a well-known ionization method in which energetic electrons interact with gas phase molecules to produce ions. This technique is widely used in mass spectrometry and especially in gas chromatography mass spectrometer (GCMS) instrumentation.1, 2 In such EI ion source, electrons are produced through thermionic emission by heating a lament that has an electric current running through it and heating it above 1000 C. Other applications that use thermionic emission are ionization gauge and evaporation control. In such a system, one important parameter is the lament emission current that determines the ionization rate. In order to keep the ionization rate stable, we need to regulate the emission current to the predetermined value. Several articles of electron emission stabilizers that are based on dedicated designs are published. Most of them39 are established upon pure analog control, without computer interface and programming ability, while others are established upon analog control with computer interface10 and digital control using commercial components.11 Our controller is designed to work in an advanced supersonic molecular beams GCMS system;12 therefore, computer interface for programming and monitoring is required. In addition, since our lament is very sensitive to damage, we need a sophisticated control that is actually not linear (the output of the controller is not a linear function of the error). On the one hand, we need a fast response control to keep the emission current constant, but on the other hand, we need to protect the lament from damage that occurs with large lament current transients or by overheating. To control our lament and emission current, we developed a digital circuit based on a digital signal processing (DSP) controller that has several modes of operation. We used a smart algorithm that has a fast response to a small signal and a slow response to a large signal. In addition, we have several protective measures that prevent the current from reaching unsafe values.
It is possible to use analog technology to generate the controller to drive the lament. This method is old fashioned, very limited as a control method, not precise, difcult to modify and calibrate, and does not allow computer interfacing. A second method to produce this controller is by using a personal computer (PC), commercial digital to analog converter (DAC) and analog to digital converter (ADC), and commercial programmable power supplies. This solution is expensive, not compact, and has a very slow response. A preferable method for implementing the same functions, uses a dedicated embedded microcontroller, DAC, high voltage operational ampliers, and power operational ampliers. The controller, presented here, was developed to work with lament voltage (VF ) of up to 10 V, lament current (IF ) of up to 10 A, emission voltage (VE ) of up to 150 V, and emission current (IE ) of up to 50 mA. The bandwidth of the controller is about 50 kHz. One is able to heat the lament by continuous current or by pulses. Heating by pulses is characterized by high efciency and higher noise, while continuous heating produces far less noise. In GCMS systems the noise is a critical parameter that affects the resolution of the data analysis; thus, we chose to work with a continuous current. Our GCMS controller consists of several more functions besides controlling the lament, as a result, we chose to work with a midrange digital signal controller (DSC) and not with a weak microprocessor. Figure 1 depicts the concept of our controller. The PC is connected to the DSC by the standard RS-232 serial port or by USBto setup, monitoring, and conguration of the controller. The DSC is connected to the multichannel serial DAC by a Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) bus. The DAC produces voltages that are amplied by three dedicated power ampliers, which drive the lament current, setting the cathode voltage and setting the anode voltage relative to the ground. Two precision resistors sample the lament and the emission currents by a dedicated amplier. Those currents are thus acquired by the controllers internal ADC and digitally ltered by the DSC. The DSC applied a smart proportional integral differential (PID) control to stabilize the current. Since
2011 American Institute of Physics
0034-6748/2011/82(2)/025111/8/$30.00
82, 025111-1
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025111-2
Eli Flaxer
RS-232 USB
ADC
PC
Anode Filament
Isolate Part
FIG. 1. (Color online) The concept of our controller. The PC connected to the DSC by the standard port. The DSC connected to the multichannels serial DAC by SPI bus. The DAC produced voltages that were amplied by three dedicated power ampliers that drive the lament current, setting the cathode voltage, and setting the anode voltage.
the lament voltage is oating relative to the ground, all of the connections to the lament electronics are isolated.
III. ELECTRONIC CIRCUIT
Figure 2 is a block diagram of the electronic circuit. The circuit is composed of six blocks: DSC, DAC, HV AMP, EMISS SENS, FIL AMP, and BUFFERS. The bock diagram actually implements the electronic architecture of the system as described in Fig. 1. The description of the DSP and DAC blocks is depicted in Fig. 3. The heart of this block is an advanced midrange, Texas Instruments13 TMS320F28335 150 MHz DSC. This controller includes a 512 kB of Flash memory for programming and 68 kB of SRAM for data. In addition, it has 16 channels of fast ADC (80 ns), oating point unit, and a wide range of peripheral units (UART, PWM, SPI, I2 C, TIMERS, and more). As one can see, the circuit includes, in addition to the processor, several supported standard hardware (dark block): Clock, Reset, JTAG, Boot, RS-232, USB, and diagnostic LED. All this standard hardware is established upon the evaluation board of the controllereZdspTM F28335 from Spectrum Digital.14
The remainder of the connections are for external DAC and internal ADC. The DAC is analog devices15 AD5360, a 16 channel, 16 bit, serial input, 10 V, digital to analog converter. The DAC communicate with the controller by SPI bus and a few more digital I/O pins. The internal ADC is unipolar, and accepts, in its inputs, voltage in the range of 03 V; thus, the input must be scaled before reading. As mentioned earlier, this controller (and DAC) is overkill for our fundamental purpose. However, since we used the controller for additional tasks in our system, we preferred to work with this controller and DAC to allow future upgrade and expansion. Therefore, if additional tasks are not required, one can replace the controller with a tiny one, e.g., Microchip16 dsPIC33FJ12GP201, and the DAC with 4 channels 12 bits converter, e.g., AD5624, still retaining the same architecture. Two outputs of the DAC are connected to the high voltage (HV) ampliers to produce voltage to the cathode and the anode of the system. The HV ampliers are based on a Cirrus Logic17 PA241 operational amplier. The PA241 is a 350 V power operational amplier that exhibits a very low 2.2 mA of quiescent current and is designed for continuous
BUFFERS In1 In2 In1 In2 In1 In2 OUT1 OUT2 OUT1 OUT2 OUT1 OUT2
DSC ADCINA0 ADCINA1 ADCINA2 ADCINA3 ADCINA4 ADCINA5 DACCLRn DACRSTn LDACn BUSYn PECn SYNCn SCLK SDI SDO CLRn RESETn LDACn BUSYn PECn SYNCn SCLK SDI SDO
Current Sens
HV AMP IE-IN EE-IN IE-OUT EE-OUT INOUT IN+ FIL AMP IN SENS FIL+ FIL-
Anode
IE EE
EMISS SENS
Catode
FILAMENT
FIG. 2. (Color online) Electronic circuit block diagram. The circuit is composed of six blocks: DSC, DAC, HV AMP, EMISS SENS, FIL AMP, and BUFFERS.
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025111-3
Eli Flaxer
CORE
JTAG & RESET ADCINA0 ADCINA1 ADCINA2 ADCINA3 ADCINA4 ADCINA5 ADCINA6 ADCINA7 +3V3 AVCC+ AVCC12 29 ADCINA0 ADCINA1 ADCINA2 ADCINA3 ADCINA4 ADCINA5 ADCINA6 ADCINA7 ADCINA0 ADCINA1 ADCINA2 ADCINA3 ADCINA4 ADCINA5 ADCINA6 ADCINA7 ADCREFIN ADCINB0 ADCINB1 ADCINB2 ADCINB3 ADCINB4 ADCINB5 ADCINB6 ADCINB7 GPIO0 GPIO1 GPIO2 GPIO3 GPIO4 GPIO5 GPIO6 GPIO7 GPIO8 GPIO9 GPIO10 GPIO11 GPIO12 GPIO13 GPIO14 GPIO15 GPIO16 GPIO17 GPIO18 GPIO19 GPIO20 GPIO21 GPIO24 GPIO25 GPIO26 GPIO27 TRSTn TCK TMS TDI TDO EMU0 EMU1 XRSn TRSTn TCK TMS TDI TDO EMU0 EMU1 XRSn DSP-JTAG_RST BOOT & CLOCK XCLKOUT XCLKIN X1 X2 XA[12..15] CLOCK XA[12..15] CLKOUT X1 X2 DSP-BOOT_CLK RS-232 UART_TXDB1 UART_RXDB1
AVCC = 15V
50 44
28 11 VDD VDD
DVCC DVCC
VSS VSS
7 VOUT0 VOUT1 VOUT2 VOUT3 VOUT4 VOUT5 VOUT6 VOUT7 REF DACREF=5V VOUT8 VOUT9 VOUT10 VOUT11 VOUT12 VOUT13 VOUT14 VOUT15 34 35 36 37 39 40 41 42 31 13 15 16 17 18 20 21 22 23 33
MON_OUT VOUT0 VOUT1 VOUT2 VOUT3 VOUT4 VOUT5 VOUT6 VOUT7 VREF0 VREF1 VOUT8 VOUT9 VOUT10 VOUT11 VOUT12 VOUT13 VOUT14 VOUT15 TEMP_OUT SIGGND0 SIGGND1 DGND DGND
8 32 6 4 +3V3
TMS320F28335
GPIO29 GPIO28 GPIO30 GPIO31 GPIO34 GPIO22 GPIO23 GPIO48 GPIO49 GPIO50 GPIO51 GPIO52 GPIO53 GPIO54 GPIO55 GPIO56 GPIO57 GPIO58 GPIO59 GPIO60 GPIO61 GPIO62 GPIO63
TX1 RX1
AD5360
SDI SDO SCLK SYNC* CLR* RESET* LDAC* BUSY* PEC* AGND
47 49 46 45 2 3 1 5 48
51 43
38 19
GND
AGND
FIG. 3. (Color online) DSP and DAC blocks details. The heart of this block is a TMS320F28335 150 MHz DSC. This controller includes a 512 kB of Flash, 68 kB of SRAM. Sixteen channels, oating point unit, and a wide range of peripherals units. The DAC communicates with the controller by SPI bus and a few more digital I/O pins.
output currents of up to 60 mA. The fundamental circuit of the amplier is shown in Fig. 4. The gain of this inverting amplier is determined by the ratio R1 /R2 ; in our circuit the gain is12. The diodes D1 and D2 protect the input from over voltage. The resistor R3 is for a current limit (30 mA) to protect the output. The supplied voltage +HV and HV could be necessary in a particular system and at a particular stage. We used 150 V for the cathode amplier and 50 V for the anode stage.
52
+V 10 25R 7 R3 OUT
PA241DW + 5 -V
HVGND
HVGND -HV
FIG. 4. (Color online) The fundamental circuit of the high voltage amplier.
The next two blocksFIL AMP and EMISS SENS are used for driving and sensing the lament current, and for sensing the emission current, respectively. The details of the blocks are shown in Fig. 5. Seeing that the lament is oating relative to the ground, the connection to the lament, in both directions, are isolated, using the ISO124 (Ref. 13) operational amplier. The third output of the DAC is amplied by OPA549. The OPA549 (Ref. 13) is a low cost, high voltage (60 V), high-current (10 A) operational amplier ideal for driving a wide variety of loads. This stage has a voltage unity gain and it works as a current amplier. The lament current is sensed by R2 0.05 resistor that produced 50 mV/A. The emission current is sensed by R4 50 resistor that produced 50 mV/mA. Since this differential voltage is biased on high voltage, we used a differential amplierAD629 (Ref. 15) to amplify it. The AD629 is a differential amplier with a very high input, common-mode voltage range. It is a precision device that allows the user to accurately measure differential signals, in the presence of high common-mode voltages, of up to 270 V. As mentioned above, the ADC accepts voltage in the range of 03 V; thus, all sensed voltage and current must be scaled to this range. The last blockBUFFERSis a scale buffer for ADC. A typical circuit of the buffers is shown in
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025111-4
Eli Flaxer
AVCC+ 1 U1
FVCC+ 15 U2
FPS+ 10 11
FPS+ = 12V/10A
V+
+VS1
+VS2
V+
IN
27 28
13 14
3 4
-IN +IN
1 2 8 6 R1 C1 10nF NPO 5K 1%
FIL+
9 FGND
V-
AGND
16
AVCC-
FVCCFVCC+ U3 1
AVCC = 15V/100mA
AVCC+ 15
FVCC = 15V/20mA
FGND FGND
+VS2
SENS
13 14
+VS1
27 28 FGND R2 0.05R 5W
ISO124U
V-
E/S
REF
OPA549T
FIL-
AGND
ISOLATE
FGND
AVCC-
16
FVCC-
AVCC = 15V/100mA
AVCC+ 7 U4 IN+ INREF+ REFAD629 3 2 5 1 AGND R3 50R 1% 0.5W 1.25V / 25mA R4 50R 1% 0.5W ININ+
OUT
6 8
OUT NC VS-
AVCC-
FIG. 5. (Color online) The current sense amplier. Seeing that the lament is oating relative to the ground, the connection to the lament in both directions are isolates, using the ISO124.
Fig. 6. The upper circuit is for bipolar signals, it is offset by 1.5 V while the gain G is determined by ratio RA /RB . The lower circuit is for unipolar signals while the gain G is 1 + (RA /RB ). In our system we measure each one of the currents by two channels with difference gain, in order to get high sensitivity in a small signal. In addition, we measured the actual voltage of anodes and cathodes to detect malfunctions in the operation of the system. The power pins of all analog devices must bypass by 0.1 and 10 F capacitors. In order to eliminate mutual interference between the digital, analog, and HV sections, each one has its own power and ground supply terminals, while all the grounds are connected in one point. All the auxiliary power supplies can be produced from one main power supply by low cost dc to dc converters.
IV. ARCHITECTURE AND EMBEDDED SOFTWARE DESIGN
VS+
ISO124U
The embedded program can be written in assembly, C or C++. We used Code Composer Studio13 3.3 (CCS) environment and ANSI C language to write the embedded program.
The real time mechanism of our software is based on hardware timer (TIMER0) that produced an interrupt with highest priority every 100 s. This clock is the trigger for the sampling process and for the feedback control process. The high speed over sampling enables us to digitally lter the measured signals. The lament is very sensitive to both large current transients and to overheating. On the one hand, we need a fast responses control to keep the emission current constant, but on the other hand, we need to protect the lament from any damage. Using a digital control, implemented by software, makes this challenge simple. The present controller has three modes of operation: (a) constant voltage, (b) constant lament current, and (c) constant emission current. The constant voltage mode works in an open loop, while the other two modes used a PID control to regulate the relevant variable. Each mode has its own PID coefcients, that can be programmed by the communication. Figure 7 represents the relevant owchart of the control loop. The function Filament PID implements the PID control for all three modes. The variable Actual Voltage stores the
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025111-5
Eli Flaxer
C1 RA A+3V3 10K 1% RB RA 100K 1% RB 10K 1% AGND C2 RA A+3V3 10K 1% RB AGND 6 5 8 OPA2365 7 U1B 500pF 40K 1% 8 OPA2365 1 U1A 500pF 100K 1%
In1 1.5V
REF
AGND
In2 4
AGND
FIG. 6. (Color online) The scale buffer for ADC. The upper circuit is for bipolar signals, it is offset by 1.5 V while the gain G is determined by ratio R A /R B . The lower circuit is for unipolar signals while the gain G is 1 + (R A /R B ).
value that is calculated by PID expression. Since the Actual Voltage can receive any values (in the system dynamic range) at any given moment, we must limit the slew rate and the current to the safe values. These limits are implemented by the function Slew And Current Limit. This function continuously
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+ + +
FIG. 8. (Color online) The debug mode GUI includes the button to set the operation mode, lament voltage, lament current, emission current, cathode voltage, large signal slew rate, small signal margin, current limit, PID coefcients, read back values and more.
averages the gradient of the lament voltage. If the averages gradient is less than the limit, the change is accepted, otherwise the change is limited to the predetermined valueLDV. In addition, in any iteration the lament current is measured and compared to the max current limit; if the current crosses that value, then the voltage is reduced to prevent the current from reaching unsafe values. The same procedure is applied to the turn on and shut down process.
025111-6
Eli Flaxer
10 9 8 7
Current (A, mA)
Voltage
Current
Emission
Voltage (V)
6 5 4 3 2
Current
1 0
FIG. 9. (Color online) The controller response to voltage step of 37 V. The voltage increased immediately by 0.2 V as the fast margin allows, and then increased at the rate of 1 V/s according to the slew rate limit.
It must be noted that replacing the TMS320F28335 processor with a dsPIC33FJ12GP201 processor, obligates the user to replace the CCS environment with a Microchip MPLAB (Ref. 16) environment. Since both the environments
support ANSI C, the source code of the control remains the same.
3 2.5 Ie (mA)
Current
The graphical user interface (GUI) and its communication program were written under National Instrument18 Lab Windows CVI environment which has full compatibility with ANSI C. The program has two modes of operation: normal and debug. To test and calibrate the system we used the debug mode. Figure 8 shows the GUI of the debug mode. As seen, the GUI includes the button to set the operation mode, lament voltage, lament current, emission current, cathode voltage, large signal slew rate, small signal margin, current limit, PID coefcients, read back values and more.
Emission
2
Ie
1.5 1 0.5
VI. RESULTS
1.5
1 3 4 5 Voltage (V) 6 7
FIG. 10. (Color online) The lament current and emission current vs lament voltage.
Using the above GUI we ran several tests to characterize and demonstrate the performance of the controller. Figure 9 represents the controller response to the voltage step of 37 V. While the cathode voltage is 66 V, the anode voltage is +4 V, the operation mode is a constant voltage, the slew rate is limited to 1 V/s, and the margin to the fast response is 0.2 V. At the starting point (1.5 s) the target voltage changed from 3 to 7 V. We saw that at this moment the voltage increased immediately by 0.2 V as the fast margin is allowed,
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025111-7
Eli Flaxer
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Emission Voltage
Voltage Emission Current
10 9 8 7
Current (A, mA)
Voltage (V)
6 5 4 3 2 1 0
Current
10
Time (Sec)
12
14
16
18
20
FIG. 11. (Color online) The controller response to emission step of 15 mA, while the operation mode is constant emission. The emission current regulated after few oscillations to the target value and stayed very stable.
10 9 Voltage 8 7 6 5 Current 4 3 2 1 0
Voltage Emission Current
Voltage (V)
Emission
10 Time (Sec)
12
14
16
18
20
FIG. 12. (Color online) Operation in constant voltage mode, while external analytics injected into the vacuum cools the lament. The emission current decreased due to the lament cooling by about 25%, and then increased back when the vacuum is restored.
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025111-8
Eli Flaxer
10 Time (Sec)
12
14
16
18
20
FIG. 13. (Color online) Operation in constant emission mode. The controller kept the emission current stable, at its primary value, while the lament voltage and lament current are changed to compensate the cooling effect.
and after that it increased at rate of 1 V/s according to the slew rate limit. The lament current follows the voltage, while the emission current follows the lament current with a delay of heating time. Figure 10 shows the calibration graph that represents the lament current and emission current versus the lament voltage. Figure 11 represents the controller response to the emission current step of 15 mA, while the operation mode is the constant emission current, and the rest of the parameters are the same as before. At the starting point (1.0 s), the target emission current changed from 1 to 5 mA. Again, we see that the slew rate limiter is active outside the margin of 0.2 V. The emission current is regulated, after a few oscillations, to the target value and remains very stable. Finally, we tested the stability of the controller against external distortion. Figure 12 shows the controller operation in constant voltage mode, while external analytics injected into the vacuum cools the lament. As we can see, the emission current decreases due to the lament cooling by about 25%, and then increases back when the temperature is restored. Figure 13 shows the same experiment, but operates in constant emission mode. We can see that the controller maintains a stable emission current, at its primary value, while the lament voltage and lament current are changed to compensate the cooling effect.
demonstrated. This design can be used for all systems that require electron emission regulation, such as GCMS, ionization gauge, and evaporation system.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author is grateful to Professor Aviv Amirav for his excellent advice on performing this work, and to Tal Alon for his help and support.
de Hoffman and V. Stroobant, Mass Spectrometry: Principles and Applications (Wiley, New York, 2001). 2 J. T. Watson and O. D. Sparkman, Introduction to Mass Spectrometry: Instrumentation, Applications, and Strategies for Data Interpretation (Wiley, New York, 2007). 3 R. Chapman, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 43, 1536 (1972). 4 K. J. Close and J. Yarwood, Vacuum 22, 45 (1972). 5 B. K. Herbert, Vacuum 26, 363 (1976). 6 S.-Y. Shaw and J. T. Lue, J. Phys. E: J. Sci. Instrum. 13, 1150 (1980). 7 F. Watanabe, S. Hiramatsu, and H. Ishimaru, Vacuum 34, 673 (1984). 8 T. Durakiewicz, Int. J. Mass Spectrom. Ion Process. 156, 31 (1996). 9 J. Sikora, Meas. Sci. Technol. 15, N10 (2004). 10 N. Donkov and W. Knapp, Meas. Sci. Technol. 8, 798 (1997). 11 F. J. Meyer, zu Heringdorf, and A. C. Belton, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 75, 5288 (2004). 12 A. Amirav, S. Dagan, T. Shahar, N. Tzanani, and S. B. Wainhaus, Advances In Mass Spectrometry (Elsevier, New York, 1998), Vol. 14. 13 Texas Instruments, see http://www.ti.com. 14 Spectrum Digital, see http://www. spectrumdigital.com. 15 Analog Devices, see http://www.analog.com. 16 Microchip, see http://www.microchip.com. 17 Cirrus Logic, see http://www.cirrus.com. 18 National Instrument, see http://www.ni.com.
1 E.
VII. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the design principles of a programmable smart electron emission controller for hot lament have been
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