User:Samlhotard/sandbox

Resonance ionization is a selective mode of ionization that is based upon atomic vibrations as an atom is excited from the ground state. This ionization method is used for the spectroscopic analysis of inorganic, elemental species. Ionization is accomplished by use of a monochromatic tunable laser, which fires a beam of photons at a gas-phase sample (the analyte). An initial photon from this beam is absorbed by one of the sample atoms, exciting one of the atom's electrons to an intermediate excited state. A second photon then ionizes the atom from the intermediate state such that its high energy level causes it to be ejected from its orbital ; the result is a positively charged ion, which is then moved into a mass analyzer.

History
Resonance ionization was first used in a spectroscopy experiment in 1971 in the Institute for Spectroscopy Russian Academy of Sciences; in that experiment, ground state Rubidium atoms were ionized using ruby lasers.

Applications
A major advantage of using resonance ionization lies in the fact that it is highly selective ionization mode; it is able to target a single type of atom amongst a background of many types of atoms. This makes resonance ionization useful when analyzing complex samples with many atomic components.