Note: Production of a mercury beam with an electron cyclotron resonance ion source.

An electron cyclotron resonance ion source has been utilized to produce mercury beams with intensities of 4.5 eμA of (202)Hg(29+) and 3.0 eμA of (202)Hg(31+) from natural abundance mercury metal. The production technique relies on the evaporation of liquid mercury into the source plasma vacuum region and utilizes elemental mercury instead of a volatile organic compound as the neutral feed material.