Ion Manipulation in Air Using a System of Curved 3D Printed Plastic Electrodes

Mass spectrometry (MS) is arguably one of the most widely used scientific tools with applications ranging from complex mixture analysis (Cooks et al. in Int. J. Mass Spectrom. 377:709–718, 2014 [1], Kojo in High-Throughput Analysis in the Pharmaceutical Industry, CRC Press, Boca Raton, pp. 377–391, 2008 [2]) to molecular biology (Aebersold and Mann in Nature 422:198–207, 2003 [3]) and even large-scale purification and materials preparation (Parkins in Phys. Today 58:45–51, 2005 [4], Johnson et al. Ann. Rev. Anal. Chem. 4:83–104, 2011 5]). Because the fundamental basis for MS relies on a low number of collisions, the operation of a mass spectrometer requires the establishment of a low pressure environment.