Overcoming field imperfections of quadrupole mass filters with mass analysis in islands of stability.

We have constructed, and tested as mass filters, linear quadrupoles with added hexapole fields of 4%, 8%, and 12%, with and without added octopole fields. A hexapole field can be added to the field of a linear quadrupole by rotating the two y rods toward an x rod. This also adds an octopole field which can be removed by making the x rods greater in diameter than the y rods. In comparison to conventional quadrupole mass filters these rod sets have severely distorted quadrupole fields, with a mix of both even and odd higher spatial harmonics. They allow evaluating the performance of rod sets with strong geometric and field distortions as mass filters. Conventional mass analysis at the tip of the stability diagram has been compared to mass analysis using islands of stability. The stability islands are produced by applying an auxiliary quadrupole excitation field to the quadrupole. We show that with normal mass analysis at the tip of the stability diagram, the transmission, resolution, and peak shapes are relatively poor in comparison to a conventional rod set. However, the use of islands of stability dramatically improves the resolution and peak shape, and in some cases ion transmission, suggesting that mass analysis with islands of stability may provide a method to overcome a wide range of field imperfections in linear quadrupole mass filters.