Application of external customized waveforms to a commercial quadrupole ion trap

AbstractThe Finnigan LCQ quadrupole ion trap has recently become part of the repertoire of instruments for many analytical laboratories. The LCQ commercial design, while employing complex waveforms to manipulate ions, does not allow the application of many state-of-the-art user-defined waveforms that enable one to perform other complex ion manipulations. The work presented here describes the simple modifications made to the LCQ electronics to allow the application of external customized waveforms. Results show that externally generated waveforms can be applied to the endcap electrodes while still working within the context of the commercial software and hardware. Double resonance, multiple ion isolation, and multiple ion excitation experiments are demonstrated to reveal the effectiveness of these modifications