Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer With Enhanced Sensitivity And Mass Resolving Power
AssigneeThermo Finnigan LLC
InventorsAlan E. SCHOEN, Robert A. Grothe, JR.
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A novel method and mass spectrometer apparatus is introduced to spatially and temporally resolve images of one or more ion exit patterns of a multipole instrument. In particular, the methods and structures of the present invention measures the ion current as a function of time and spatial displacement in the beam cross-section of a quadrupole mass filter via an arrayed detector. The linearity of the detected quadrupole ion current in combination with it reproducible spatial-temporal structure enables the deconvolution of the contributions of signals from individual ion species in complex mixtures where both sensitivity and mass resolving power are essential.
Claims36
A high mass resolving power high sensitivity mass spectrometer, comprising:
- a multipole configured to pass an abundance of one or more ion species within stability boundaries defined by (a, q) values;
- a detector configured to record the spatial and temporal properties of said abundance of ions at a cross-sectional area of said multipole;
- and
- a processing means configured to subject said recorded spatial and temporal properties of said abundance of one or more species of ions as a function of the applied RF and/or DC fields to deconvolution so as to provide mass discrimination of said one or more ion species.
A high mass resolving power high sensitivity multipole mass spectrometer method, comprising:
- providing a reference signal;
- acquiring spatial and temporal raw data of an abundance of one or more ion species from an exit channel of said multipole;
- breaking the acquired data into one or more chunks;
- computing the dot product of one of more chunks of data with each of said reference signals;
- reconstructing a mass spectrum by providing estimates of ion abundance at regular intervals of mass-to-charge ratio using said observed raw data and said reference signals;
- and
- reconstructing a list of distinct m/z values and estimated intensities using said observed raw data and said reference signals.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.