Improvement of the duty cycle of an orthogonal acceleration time-of-flight mass spectrometer using ion gates

A method to control the duty cycle of a time-of-flight mass spectrometer is described. The method relies on one or more ion gates placed in the beam path that have the function to transmit or stop the beam. These ion gates can switch from the open state to the closed state in tens of nanoseconds and effectively select portions of the mass range. The method is useful in circumstances where recording the complete mass spectrum is not an essential requirement, for example, in the analysis of known compounds where sensitivity and speed of operation are more important. It will be of benefit for applications in separation sciences with techniques involving fast chromatographic separations, where hundreds of mass spectra may be required per second. In such circumstances analytical identification may require only a limited number of masses (or mass regions) to be continuously monitored. Improvement of the duty cycle is particularly important for orthogonal-acceleration time-of-flight (oa-TOF) mass spectrometry instruments whose performance suffers from a low duty cycle. The duty cycle is not a constant for an instrument design but is a mass-dependent function and is least for smaller masses. The method described here is capable of raising the duty cycle to 100%. A theory is developed for one or more ion gate arrangements, for both linear- and reflectron-TOF systems. For a two-gate system the relationship between the positions of the first and second gates is described by a '2/3 rule'. Experimental results are shown for one-gate and two-gate operation, both in linear and in reflectron modes of operation, on an oa-TOF system built in-house.