PROJECTS
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MR-TOF-Multi-reflecting time-of-flight mass spectrometers
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TOF-TOFfor comprehensive parallel MS-M
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o-TOF– time-of-flight mass spectrometers with orthogonal injection
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Interfaces and Ion Guidesfor gaseous ion transfer
MR-TOF -Multi-reflecting time-of-flight mass spectrometers
Planar MRT are invented and designed to increase resolving power within a compact package. Ion path is increased to 20-40m within 1m analyzers.
Multi-reflecting design in combination with 4-th order focusing mirror allows to receive Resolving power R >200,000 for various ion pulsed converters – from orthogonal accelerator to pulsed trap converters with minimum or no ion losses.
At R~100,000 a sub-ppm mass measurement accuracy (MMA) is achieved within 104-105 dynamic range per 1 second signal accumulation.
The scheme provides full mass range.
Ion losses within analyzer are practically eliminated due to ions confinement in focusing and grid-free ion mirrors and periodic lens.
Pulsed converters
Main ion losses in MR-TOF occur due to elongated flight time accompanied by substantial drop of duty cycle of orthogonal accelerator. Multiple means are taken to increase sensitivity of the instrument (improved interfaces, velocity modulation)
Pulsed ion traps recover duty cycle, but limit number of ions per pulse to ~ 3.103 ions/peak and about 3.107 ions/spectrum/sec due to space charge induced corruption of mass spectrum. Trap converters are best suited for tandem MS with MRT as second analyzer.
Ion injection from ion traps into MR-TOF is implemented via curved isochronous interfaces.
TOF-TOF for comprehensive parallel MS-MS
Planar MRT is employed for slow separation of parent ions in few ms time scale. Fast CID cell and fast o-TOF is employed for fragment analysis in 30-50us time scale. After interleaving of few MRT pulses a full scale MS-MS is obtained for all parent ions with parent ion resolution R1>200 and fragment ion resolution R2>5000 [patent TOF-TOF]. Numerous advances are made to eliminate ion losses through the system and to reach speed of 100 MS-MS spectra per second.
o-TOF – Time-of-flight mass spectrometers with orthogonal injection
The instruments are used for development of ion sources, interfaces, detectors and data system. Our typical o-TOF provide resolving power from 5K to 15K and duty cycle from 20 to 40%.
Gaseous ion Sources
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Electrospray (ESI) (from 1 to 500ul/min)
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Photo Ionization (1Torr to 1atm) for GC-MS
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Glow discharge (1 to 100Torr) for GC-MS
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Electron impact (pulsed, continuous)
We optimize those ion sources for higher sensitivity, robustness and protection against contamination, analytical merits and standard spectra view
Gaseous ion transfer Interfaces and Ion Guides
Transfer interfaces are based on experimentally optimized gas dynamics, non-standard radiofrequency (RF) ion guides and tediously designed vacuum ion optics. A wide range of non-standard RF devices comprise compact RF ion guides and RF arrays, operating in a wide range of gas pressure and at high frequency RF, velocity modulation and pulse conversion off ion guides. Ion optics prevents ion beam touching surfaces at low energy and forms a well controlled ion beam emittance. Numerous non conventional ion-optical solutions are invented and implemented.