Printed Circuit Board Ion Trap Mass Analyzer: Its Structure and Performance

An ion trap (IT) mass analyzer can be simply built with low cost material—the printed circuit board (PCB). A printed circuit board ion trap (PCBIT) can perform ion trapping, mass analysis, and tandem mass spectrometry as a conventional ion trap mass analyzer. In a PCBIT, each PCB electrode was fabricated to specially designed patterns with several separate electric strips. The strips’ electrodes were insulated from each other and applied with different voltages during the experiment. Therefore, the electric field distribution inside the ion trap region may be adjusted and optimized by simply adjusting the voltage on each strip. The performance of the PCBIT can also be optimized since the property of an ion trap is strongly dependent on the field distribution. The fabrication, operation, and performance of the PCBIT are described and characterized in this paper. A prototype PCBIT was built with two pairs of 64 mm × 12 mm PCB rectangular plates and one pair of 10 mm × 10 mm stainless steel square plates. A ...