So they 3D-print the electrodes and their supports from some glass-ceramic-resin composite and then use electroless metal deposition on the surfaces that are to become the electrodes. Metallizing just the electrodes while avoiding the support structure might be fiddly.
I think the traditional rod electrodes weren't the hardest part in a mass spectrometer anyway. The vacuum system and a reliable sample input port are what makes it expensive.
Jeroen Belleman
I'd be surprised if it didn't outgas essentially forever using that manufacturing technique. Lost wax casting might stand more chance...
Particularly for the precision hard vacuum of magnetic sector mass specs which are typically baked to 150C to get the last traces of water off the internal surfaces as a part of commissioning. It was bad news if someone left a screwdriver inside at that stage (and it did happen).
When I was involved in that game only a handful of plastics could handle that sort of abuse PTFE and the engineering plastic PEEK.
Quadrupoles will tolerate a much worse vacuum - I can't recall by how much but ICPMS effectively works with a pinhole facing a 8000K plasma at
1ATM and some Faraday cup and turbo pump based ones could survive without interlocks. The main difficulty was keeping the sampling orifice from melting! Classic ones with oil diffusion pumps you had a very big cleaning job to do if the vacuum protection system interlocks failed.The high end ones with ion counting sensors in needed a decent vacuum all the time and a photon stop to avoid the sensor seeing the plasma flame. They had sophisticated interlocks to prevent various forms of catastrophic failures like meltdown, fire, flood and other mayhem.
I think that the 800C rating of the glass-ceramic material should be adequate for bake-out, and as you point out below ultra-high vacuum is not required for quadrapole MS. The study was funded by a company in the medical MS business, probably not out of kindness.
Likely suspect for the 3D printing system:
"LithaGlass ... a composite slurry with a base of quartz glass ... The design freedom of 3D printing combines with the desirable properties of high-performance fused silica glass – such as mechanical stability and high thermal and chemical resistance, as well as low thermal expansion and a resulting high thermal shock resistance. With LithaGlass being closer to a ceramic than standard glasses like soda lime glass, it also has the desirable material properties of fused silica glass including a low thermal expansion and high thermal shock resistance."
Sparse on details, but likely any resin used as binder is baked out in the process of heating to particle fusing temperature, although post-printing processing is not discussed. If they have a resin that can withstand the
800C working temp of the finished product that would be rather impressive. Perhaps they are using some non-polymer binder with no post processing required, they have not identified any component of the slurry except for silica.ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.