Development of a Bunching Ionizer for TOF Mass Spectrometers with Reduced Resources

In some types of mass spectrometers, such as time-of-flight mass spectrometers (TOF-MSs), it is necessary to control pulsed beams of ions. This can be easily accomplished by applying a pulsed voltage to the pusher electrode while the ionizer is continuously flowing ions. This method is preferred for its simplicity, although the ion utilization efficiency is not optimized. Here we employed another pulse-control method with a higher ion utilization rate, which is to bunch ions and kick them out instead of letting them stream. The benefit of this method is that higher sensitivity can be achieved; since the start of new ions cannot be allowed during TOF separation, it is highly advantageous to bunch ions that would otherwise be unusable. In this study, we used analytical and numerical methods to design a new bunching ionizer with reduced resources, adopting the principle of the electrostatic ion beam trap. The test model experimentally demonstrated the bunching performance with respect to the sample gas density and ion bunching time using gas samples and electron impact ionization. We also conducted an experiment connecting the newly developed bunching ionizer with a miniature TOF-MS. As a result, the sensitivity was improved by an order of magnitude compared to the case using a nonbunching ionizer. Since the device is capable of bunching ions with low voltage and power consumption, it will be possible to find applications in portable mass spectrometers with reduced resources.