Ion trap array mass analyzer: structure and performance.

An ion trap array (ITA) mass analyzer--a novel ion trap mass analyzer with multiple ion trapping and analyzing channels--was designed and constructed. Its property and performance were investigated and reported in this paper. The ITA was built with several planar electrodes including two parallel printed circuit board (PCB) plates. Each PCB plate was fabricated to several identical rectangular electric strips based on normal PCB fabrication technology and was placed symmetrically to those on the opposite plate. There is no electrode between any two adjacent strips. Every strip was supplied with an rf voltage while the polarity of the voltage applied to the adjacent two strips was opposite. So the electric potential at the central plane between two adjacent strips is zero. Multiple identical electric field regions that contain the dominant quadrupole plus some other high-order fields were produced between the two PCB plates. The multiple identical electric field regions will have the property of ion trapping, ion storage, and mass analysis functions. So an ITA could work as multiple ion trap mass analyzers. It could perform multiple sample ion storage, mass-selected ion isolation, ion ejection, and mass analysis simultaneously. The ITA was operated at both "digital ion trap mode" and "conventional rf mode" experimentally. A preliminary mass spectrum has been carried out in one of the ion trap channels, and it shows a mass resolution of over 1000. Additional functions such as mass-selected ion isolation and mass-selected ion ejection have also been tested. Furthermore, the ITA has a small size and very low cost. An ITA with four channels is less than 30 cm(3) in total volume, and it shows a great promise for the miniaturization of the whole mass spectrometer instrument and high-throughput mass analysis.