Mass peak shape improvement of a quadrupole mass filter when operating with a rectangular wave power supply.

Numeric experiments were performed to study the first and second stability regions and find the optimal configurations of a quadrupole mass filter constructed of circular quadrupole rods with a rectangular wave power supply. The ion transmission contours were calculated using ion trajectory simulations. For the first stability region, the optimal rod set configuration and the ratio r/r(0) is 1.110-1.115; for the second stability region, it is 1.128-1.130. Low-frequency direct current (DC) modulation with the parameters of m = 0.04-0.16 and nu = omega/Omega = 1/8-1/14 improves the mass peak shape of the circular rod quadrupole mass filter at the optimal r/r(0) ratio of 1.130. The amplitude modulation does not improve mass peak shape.