Time-of-flight mass spectrometer as the second stage for a tandem mass spectrometer

摘要

A time-of-flight mass spectrometer is disclosed that can be used as the second stage of a tandem mass spectrometer, a so called MS-MS system, for the mass analysis of molecule fragment ions. In this system it is foreseen that the precursor-molecule ion of a particular mass is fractionated in a dissociation medium where a start-time signal is formed at the time of the fractionation. The flight time in this time-of-flight mass spectrometer--and thus the masses of the molecule-fragment ions--are then determined from the arrival times of the individual fragment ions at some stop detector.