Highly Efficient Ion Manipulator for Tandem Ion Mobility Spectrometry: Exploring a Versatile Technique by a Study of Primary Alcohols.

In this work, we present a tandem ion mobility spectrometer (IMS) utilizing a highly efficient ion manipulator allowing to store, manipulate, and analyze ions under high electric field strengths and controlled ion-neutral reactions at ambient conditions. The arrangement of tandem drift regions and an ion manipulator in a single drift tube allows a sequence of mobility selection of precursor ions, followed by storage and analysis, mobility separation, and detection of the resulting product ions. In this article, we present a journey exploring the capabilities of the present instrument by a study of eight different primary alcohols characterized at reduced electric field strengths / of up to 120 Td with a water vapor concentration ranging from 40 to 540 ppb.

A High Kinetic Energy Ion Mobility Spectrometer for Operation at Higher Pressures of up to 60 mbar.

High Kinetic Energy Ion Mobility Spectrometers (HiKE-IMS) are usually operated at absolute pressures around 20 mbar in order to reach high reduced electric field strengths of up to 120 Td for influencing reaction kinetics in the reaction region. Such operating points significantly increase the linear range and limit chemical cross sensitivities. Furthermore, HiKE-IMS enables ionization of compounds normally not detectable in ambient pressure IMS, such as benzene, due to additional reaction pathways and fewer clustering reactions.

Miniaturized Drift Tube Ion Mobility Spectrometer with Ultra-Fast Polarity Switching.

Ion mobility spectrometers (IMS) are well suited for detecting trace gases down to levels at ppb and even ppt within 1 s of analysis time when using chemical ionization. The measuring principle is based on the separation and detection of the ionized constituents of a sample. Depending on the sample composition, certain ionization sources create both positive and negative analyte ions, but the simultaneous detection of both ion polarities usually requires two drift tubes.

Toward Compact High-Performance Ion Mobility Spectrometers: Ion Gating in Ion Mobility Spectrometry.

Printed circuit board (PCB) based drift tube ion mobility spectrometers enable the use of state-of-the-art production techniques to manufacture compact devices with excellent performance at minimum cost. The new PCB ion mobility spectrometer (PCB-IMS) presented here is equipped with either a 140 MBq tritium or a 95 MBq nickel-63 ionization source and consists of a combination of horizontally arranged 6-layer PCBs for the drift and reaction regions and vertically arranged PCBs for interfacing the ionization source, ion shutter, and detector. The design allows the reproducible manufacturing and thus comparison of different IMS topologies.

Enhanced Resolving Power by Moving Field Ion Mobility Spectrometry.

Ion mobility spectrometry is a powerful detection method widely used in various applications. Particularly in field applications, ion mobility spectrometers (IMSs) are useful because of their extremely low detection limits at short measuring periods and their compact and robust design. However, especially small IMSs suffer from the consequences of low resolving power when compared to laboratory systems.

High Kinetic Energy Ion Mobility Spectrometry (HiKE-IMS) at 40 mbar.

High Kinetic Energy Ion Mobility Spectrometers (HiKE-IMS) are usually operated at an absolute pressure of 20 mbar reaching high reduced electric field strengths of up to 125 Td for controlled reaction kinetics. This significantly increases the linear range and limits chemical cross sensitivities. Furthermore, HiKE-IMS enables the ionization of compounds normally not detectable in ambient pressure IMS, such as benzene, due to new reaction pathways and the inhibition of clustering reactions.

Improving Ion Mobility Spectrometer Sensitivity through the Extended Field Switching Ion Shutter.

Field switching ion shutters allow generating short ion packets with high ion densities by first ionizing for several milliseconds in a field-free ionization region and then quickly pushing the entire ion population out into the drift region. Thus, they are an excellent choice for compact ion mobility spectrometers with both high resolving power and low limits of detection. Here, we present an improved setup, named the extended field switching ion shutter.

Ion Fragmentation and Filtering by Alpha Function in Ion Mobility Spectrometry for Improved Compound Differentiation.

Collision induced dissociation (CID) is a widely used technique in mass spectrometry to better understand the structural composition of ions and to improve the identification of compounds beyond the analysis of /. By increasing the kinetic energy of ions in an electric field, the collisions with neutral molecules may result in bond breakage, dissociation, or fragmentation of the molecular ion into smaller fragments if the necessary onset energy is exceeded. In this work and for the first time, we demonstrate CID in a field asymmetric time of flight ion mobility spectrometer (FAT-IMS).

A Simple Printed Circuit Board-Based Ion Funnel for Focusing Low m/z Ratio Ions with High Kinetic Energies at Elevated Pressure.

Ion funnels are one of the key components for transferring ions from higher pressure into the vacuum. Typically, ion funnels are constructed of several different plate ring electrodes with a decreasing inner diameter where radio frequency (RF) voltages and electric DC fields are applied to the electrodes to focus and transport ion clouds. In this work, we developed and investigated a simple and low-cost ion funnel design that is based on standard printed circuit boards (PCB) with integrated planar electrodes including the signal distribution network.

Ultra-high-resolution ion mobility spectrometry-current instrumentation, limitations, and future developments.

With recent advances in ionization sources and instrumentation, ion mobility spectrometers (IMS) have transformed from a detector for chemical warfare agents and explosives to a widely used tool in analytical and bioanalytical applications. This increasing measurement task complexity requires higher and higher analytical performance and especially ultra-high resolution. In this review, we will discuss the currently used ion mobility spectrometers able to reach such ultra-high resolution, defined here as a resolving power greater than 200.

Ion mobility spectrometer with orthogonal X-Ray source for increased sensitivity.

Ion mobility spectrometers (IMS) are compact devices for extremely sensitive detection of proton and electron affine volatile compounds down to low ppt concentrations within less than a second. The measuring principle requires ionization of the target analyte. Most IMS employ radioactive electron sources, such as Ni or H.

Fast Orthogonal Separation by Superposition of Time of Flight and Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometry.

Ion mobility spectrometry is a powerful and low-cost technique for the identification of chemical warfare agents, toxic chemicals, or explosives in air. Drift tube ion mobility spectrometers (DT-IMS) separate ions by the absolute value of their low field ion mobility, while field asymmetric ion mobility spectrometers (FAIMS) separate them by the change of their ion mobility at high fields. However, using one of these devices alone, some common and harmless substances show the same response as the hazardous target substances.