Ion parking during ion/ion reactions in electrodynamic ion traps.

Under appropriate ion density conditions, it is possible to selectively inhibit rates of ion/ion reactions in a quadrupole ion trap via the application of oscillatory voltages to one or more electrodes of the ion trap. The phenomenon is demonstrated using dipolar resonance excitation applied to the end-cap electrodes of a three-dimensional quadrupole ion trap. The application of a resonance excitation voltage tuned to inhibit the ion/ion reaction rate of a specific range of ion mass-to-charge ratios is referred to as "ion parking". The bases for rate inhibition are (i) an increase in the relative velocity of the ion/ion reaction pair, which reduces the cross section for ion/ion capture and, at least in some cases, (ii) reduction in the time of physical overlap of positively charged and negatively charged ion clouds. The efficiency and specificity of the ion parking experiment is highly dependent upon ion densities, trapping conditions, ion charge states, and resonance excitation conditions. The ion parking experiment is illustrated herein along with applications to the concentration of ions originally present over a range of charge states into a selected charge state and in the selection of a particular ion from a set of ions derived from a simple protein mixture.