  Gas Electron Multipliers have undergone a very consistent development since
their invention in 1997. Their production procedures have been tuned in such a
way that nowadays it is possible to produce foils with areas of the order of
the square meter that can operate at a reasonable gain, uniform over large
areas and with a good stability in what concerns electrical discharges. For the
third run of LHC, they will be included in the CMS and ALICE experiments after
significant upgrades of the detectors, confirming that these structures are
suitable for very large experiments. In the special case of Time Projection
Chambers, the ion backflow and the energy resolution are sensitive issues that
must be addressed and the GEM has shown to be able to deal with both of them.
  In this work, a stack of three GEMs with different pitches has been studied
as a possible future approach for ion-backflow suppression to be used in TPCs
and other detection concepts. With this approach, an ion backflow of 1 % with
an energy resolution of 12 % at 5.9 keV has been achieved with the detector
operating in an Ar/CO2 (90/10) mixture at a gain of ~ 2000.
