Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is the leading contender for adoption as the next generation lithography technique. One of the critical challenges in this technology is producing defect-free masks. Particles generated in the fabrication process often deposit on the mask blank and result in phase and amplitude defects. Hence, it is important to study the transport, behavior and generation of particles in the ion deposition tool used for mask blank deposition. We show results on detecting particles from ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) valves by using optical counters and condensation particle counters. The particles were also trapped using impactor plates and analyzed with Energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDX) for elemental composition.