Theoretical study of the effect of ion trap geometry on the dynamic behavior of ions in a Paul trap

Abstract The influence of the ion trap geometrical shape, ring and end-cap electrodes, on the dynamical behavior of the confined ions is studied. At first by considering the geometrical parameter z 0 = ( 1 / n ) r 0 , where n is a real number, in the quadrupole potential, we solve Mathieu's differential equation for the first stability region using the six-order Runge–Kutta method. The numerical results show that, for a given ion trap mode i.e., rf only mode, the electrode geometry plays an important role both in higher ion mass confinement range and in a higher fractional mass resolution m /Δ m .