Single Particle Analyzer of Mass: A Charge Detection Mass Spectrometer with a Multi-Detector Electrostatic Ion Trap

A new charge detection mass spectrometer that combines array detection and electrostatic ion trapping to repeatedly measure the masses of single ions is described. This instrument has four detector tubes inside an electrostatic ion trap with conical electrodes (cone trap) to provide multiple measurements of an ion on each pass through the trap resulting in a signal gain over a conventional trap with a single detection tube. Simulations of a cone trap and a dual ion mirror trap design indicate that more passes through the trap per unit time are possible with the latter. However, the cone trap has the advantages that ions entering up to 2 mm off the central axis of the trap are still trapped, the trapping time is less sensitive to the background pressure, and only a narrow range of energies are trapped so it can be used for energy selection. The capability of this instrument to obtain information about the molecular weight distributions of heterogeneous high molecular weight samples is demonstrated with 8 MDa polyethylene glycol (PEG) and 50 and 100 nm amine modified polystyrene nanoparticle samples. The measured mass distribution of the PEG sample is centered at 8 MDa. The size distribution obtained from mass measurements of the 100 nm nanoparticle sample is similar to the size distribution obtained from transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images, but most of the smaller nanoparticles observed in TEM images of the 50 nm nanoparticles do not reach a sufficiently high charge to trigger the trap on a single pass and be detected by the mass spectrometer. With the maximum trapping time set to 100 ms, the charge uncertainty is as low as ±2 charges and the mass uncertainty is approximately 2% for PEG and polystyrene ions.