Time-of-flight mass spectrometer and a method of analysing ions in a time-of-flight mass spectrometer

摘要

A time-of-flight mass spectrometer (1) comprises an ion source a segmented linear ion device (10) for receiving sample ions supplied by the ion source and a time-of-flight mass analyzer for analyzing ions ejected from the segmented device. A trapping voltage is applied to the segmented device to trap ions initially into a group of two or more adjacent segments and subsequently to trap them in a region of the segmented device shorter than the group of segments. The trapping voltage may also be effective to provide a uniform trapping field along the length of the device (10).