Time-of-Flight Analysis of a Continuous Beam of Ions by a Detector Array

A time-of-flight mass (TOF) spectrometer for analyzing a continuous beam of ions that optimizes the utilization of the area of a rectangular detector, comprising:

• an ion source that ionizes a sample producing a continuous beam of ions;
• a mass filter that receives the continuous beam and admits ions with a desired range of mass-to-charge ratios and blocks ions outside the desired range producing a filtered beam of ions;
• an accelerator that receives the filtered beam and applies an electric field to the continuous beam of ions producing an accelerated beam of ions;
• a two-dimensional rectangular detector that records an arrival time and a two-dimensional arrival position of each ion in the accelerated beam;
• and
• a deflector located between the accelerator and the two-dimensional rectangular detector that receives the accelerated beam and applies an electric field that is periodic with time to the accelerated beam in order to sweep the accelerated beam over a periodically repeating path on the two-dimensional rectangular detector,
• wherein the repeat period is set to the difference in the times required for ions with the highest and lowest mass-to-charge ratios in the filtered beam to travel from the deflector to the two-dimensional rectangular detector and
• wherein the path has a maximum length among all paths that satisfies the following constraint:
• for any point x on the two-dimensional rectangular detector, the intersection between a circular region of diameter s centered about x and the path contains no more than one segment, where s denotes the diameter of the accelerated beam's cross section measured at the two-dimensional rectangular detector.