Ion trapping techniques

Ion traps are widely used in optical spectroscopy, metrology and mass spectrometry, Targeted ions (formed either in situ or transported into the trap from an external source) are isolated and trapped using magnetic and/or electric fields. Over the past 15 years several different trap designs have emerged for different applications. All these designs are variants of one of the three generic traps - the Penning trap, the linear trap and the Paul trap. This paper will outlines the method used to trap ions by these three techniques.