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Updated: May 23, 2026

Experimental Methods for Trapping Ions Using Microfabricated Surface Ion Traps
Published on: August 17, 2017
Characteristics of electrical field and ion motion in surface-electrode ion traps
Xiaoyu Zhou1, Gaoping Xu, Caiqiao Xiong
1Department of Physics, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China.
Abstract:
In this article, we calculated the potential function of the surface-electrode ion trap (SEIT) by using Green's function method, optimized trap size, obtained the coefficients of the multipoles and analyzed ion trajectories in the RF potential. The optimized SEIT not only increases its trapping well depth by a factor of about 15, but also has relatively good linearity of the field (or large quadrupole component). The current design of SEIT can work well either as the ion guide for ion transmission or as the ion trap for ion confinement. Our research can be used to calculate the potential function in the SEIT with different device parameters, understand ion motions in the traps and optimize instrument performance. The method for calculating potential function can be expanded to planar and halo ion traps.
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