Printed
Circuit Board Ion Trap Mass Analyzer: Its
Structure and Performance
- Publication date
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Abstract
An ion trap (IT) mass analyzer can
be simply built with low cost
materialthe printed circuit board (PCB). A printed circuit
board ion trap (PCBIT) can perform ion trapping, mass analysis, and
tandem mass spectrometry as a conventional ion trap mass analyzer.
In a PCBIT, each PCB electrode was fabricated to specially designed
patterns with several separate electric strips. The strips’
electrodes were insulated from each other and applied with different
voltages during the experiment. Therefore, the electric field distribution
inside the ion trap region may be adjusted and optimized by simply
adjusting the voltage on each strip. The performance of the PCBIT
can also be optimized since the property of an ion trap is strongly
dependent on the field distribution. The fabrication, operation, and
performance of the PCBIT are described and characterized in this paper.
A prototype PCBIT was built with two pairs of 64 mm × 12 mm PCB
rectangular plates and one pair of 10 mm × 10 mm stainless steel
square plates. A mass analysis with a resolving power of over 1500
and a mass range of around 3000 Th was observed. The mass-selected
isolation and collision-induced dissociation (CID) of ions were also
tested using the homemade PCBIT system. The adjustable electric field
distribution, simple structure, and low cost of PCBIT make it certainly
suitable for the further miniaturization of the portable mass spectrometer