Note: Design and construction of a simple and reliable printed circuit board-substrate Bradbury-Nielsen gate for ion...

A less laborious, structure-simple, and performance-reliable printed circuit board (PCB) based Bradbury-Nielsen gate for high-resolution ion mobility spectrometry was introduced and investigated. The gate substrate was manufactured using a PCB etching process with small holes (Φ 0.1 mm) drilled along the gold-plated copper lines. Two interdigitated sets of rigid stainless steel spring wire (Φ 0.1 mm) that stands high temperature and guarantees performance stability were threaded through the holes. Our homebuilt ion mobility spectrometer mounted with the gate gave results of about 40 for resolution while keeping a signal intensity of over 0.5 nano-amperes.