Controlled ion ejection from an external trap for extended m/z range in FT-ICR mass spectrometry

J Am Soc Mass Spectrom. 2014 Jun;25(6):943-9. doi: 10.1007/s13361-014-0871-6. Epub 2014 Apr 2.

Abstract

An auxiliary rf waveform of the same amplitude and phase applied to all the rods of an ion accumulation multipole creates an m/z-dependent axial pseudo potential. Controlled decrease of the auxiliary rf amplitude releases ions from the accumulation multipole sequentially from high to low m/z. The slope of the auxiliary rf voltage ramp is adjusted so that ions of different m/z reach the center of the ICR cell at the same time point, which mitigates the typical time dispersion observed in external source FT-ICR and extends the observable mass range for a single data acquisition by 2- to 3-fold. For complex mixture analysis, twice the number of elemental compositions are assigned when the auxiliary rf ejection is applied compared with the standard gated trapping.