Novel control modes to improve the performance of rectilinear ion trap mass spectrometer with dual pressure chambers

The rectilinearion trap (RIT) has gradually become one of the preferred massanalyzers for portablemass spectrometers because of its simple configuration. In order to enhance the performance, including sensitivity, quantitation capability, throughput, and resolution, a novel RITmass spectrometer with dualpressurechambers was designed and characterized. The studied system constituted aquadrupole linearion trap (QLIT) in the firstchamber and a RIT in the secondchamber. Two controlmodes are hereby proposed: StorageQuadrupole Linear Ion Trap-RectilinearIon Trap (SQLIT-RIT)mode, in which the QLIT was used athigh pressure for ion storage and isolation, and the RIT was used foranalysis; andAnalysisQuadrupole Linear Ion Trap-RectilinearIon Trap (AQLIT-RIT)mode, in which the QLIT was used for ion storage and cooling. Subsequently, synchronous scanning andanalysis were carried out by QLIT and RIT. In SQLIT-RITmode, signal intensity was improved by a factor of 30; the limit of quantitation was reduced more than tenfold to 50 ng mL−1, and an optimal duty cycle of 96.4% was achieved. In AQLIT-RITmode, the number of ions coexisting in the RIT was reduced, which weakened thespace-charge effect and reduced the mass shift. Furthermore, the mass resolution was enhanced by a factor of 3. The results indicate that the novel controlmodes achieve satisfactory performance without adding any system complexity, which provides a viable pathway to guarantee good analytical performance in miniaturizati...

Source: Review of Scientific Instruments - October 3, 2016 Category: Physics Authors: Xinming Huo, Fei Tang, Xiaohua Zhang, Jin Chen, Yan Zhang, Cheng ’an Guo and Xiaohao Wang Source Type: research