Electrostatic trap (E-Trap) and multi-pass time-of-flight (MP-TOF) mass spectrometers (MS) generally appear to share one common feature—the analyzer electrostatic fields are designed to provide an isochronous ion motion with respect to small initial energy, angular, and spatial spreads of the ion packets. In MP-TOF MS, ion packets follow a predetermined folded ion path from a pulsed source to a detector, and ion mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) is determined from the ion flight time (T), where T˜(m/z)0.5. In E-Trap MS, ions are trapped indefinitely and the ion flight path is not fixed. Ion m/z is determined from the frequency (F) of ion oscillations, where F˜(m/z)−0.5. The signal from an image charge detector is analyzed with the Fourier transformation (FT).
Both techniques are challenged to provide a combination of the following parameters: (a) spectral acquisition rate up to 100 spectra a second in order to match speed of GC-MS, LC-IMS-MS, and LC-MS-MS experiments; (b) ion charge throughput from 1E+9 to 1E+11 ions/sec in order to match ion flux from modern ion sources like ESI (1E+9 ion/sec), EI (1E+10 ion/sec) and ICP (1E+11 ion/sec); and (c) mass resolving power in the order 100,000 to provide mass accuracy under part-per-million (ppm) for unambiguous identification in highly populated mass spectra.
TOF MS:
High resolution TOF MS developments have been made with the introduction of electrostatic ion mirrors. Mamyrin et al in U.S. Pat. No. 4,072,862, incorporated herein by reference, appears to suggest using a double stage ion mirror to reach second-order time per energy focusing. Frey et al in U.S. Pat. No. 4,731,532, incorporated herein by reference, appears to suggest introducing grid-free ion mirrors with a decelerating lens at the mirror entrance to provide a spatial ion focusing and to avoid ion losses on meshes. Aberrations of grid-free ion mirrors have been improved by incorporation of an accelerating lens by Wollnik et al in Rapid Comm. Mass Spectrom., v. 2 (1988) #5, 83-85, incorporated herein by reference. From that point it became apparent that the resolution of TOF MS is no longer limited by analyzer aberrations, but rather by the initial time spread appearing in the pulsed ion sources. To diminish effects of the initial time spread one should extend the flight path.
Multi-Pass TOF MS:
One type of MP-TOF, a multi-reflecting MR-TOF MS arranges a folded W-shaped ion path between electrostatic ion mirrors to maintain a reasonable size of the instrument. Parallel ion mirrors covered by grids has been described by Shing-Shen Su, Int. J. Mass Spectrom. Ion Processes, v. 88 (1989) 21-28, incorporated herein by reference. To avoid ion losses on grids, Nazarov et al in SU1725289, incorporated herein by reference, suggested gridless ion mirrors. To control ion drift, Verenchikov et al in WO2005001878, incorporated herein by reference, suggested using a set of periodic lenses in a field-free region. Another type of MP-TOF—so called Multi-turn TOF (MT-TOF) employs electrostatic sectors to form spiral loop (race-track) ion trajectories as described in Satoh et al, J. Am. Soc. Mass Spectrom., v. 16 (2005) 1969-1975, incorporated herein by reference. Compared to MR-TOF, the spiral MT-TOF has notably higher ion optical aberrations and can tolerate much smaller energy, angular and spatial spreads of ion packets. The MP-TOF MS provide mass resolving power in the range of 100,000 but they are limited by space charge throughput estimated as 1E+6 ions per mass peak per second.
E-Trap MS with TOF Detector:
Ion trapping in electrostatic traps (E-trap) allows further extension of the flight path. GB2080021 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,017,780, both incorporated herein by reference, suggest I-path MR-TOF where ion packets are reflected between coaxial gridless mirrors. Looping of ion trajectories between electrostatic sectors is described by Ishihara et al in U.S. Pat. No. 6,300,625, incorporated herein by reference. In both examples, ion packets are pulsed injected onto a looped trajectory and after a preset delay the packets are ejected onto a time-of-flight detector. To avoid spectral overlaps, the analyzed mass range is shrunk reverse proportional to number of cycles which is the main drawback of E-Traps with a TOF detector.
E-Trap MS with Frequency Detector:
To overcome mass range limitations I-path electrostatic traps (I-Path E-Trap) employ an image current detector to sense the frequency of ion oscillations as suggested in U.S. Pat. No. 6,013,913A, U.S. Pat. No. 5,880,466, U.S. Pat. No. 6,744,042, Zajfman et al Anal. Chem, v. 72 (2000) 4041-4046, incorporated herein by reference. Such systems are referred as I-path E-traps or Fourier Transform (FT) I-path E-traps and form part of the prior art (FIG. 1). In spite of the large size analyzer (0.5-1 m between mirror caps), the volume occupied by ion packets is limited to ˜1 cm3. A combination of low oscillation frequencies (under 100 kHz for 1000 amu ions) and low space charge capacity (1E+4 ions per injection) either severely limit an acceptable ion flux or lead to strong space charge effects, such as self-bunching of ion packets and peaks coalescence.
Orbital E-traps:
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,886,346 Makarov, incorporated herein by reference, suggested electrostatic Orbital Trap with an image charge detector (trade mark ‘Orbitrap’). The Orbital Trap is a cylindrical electrostatic trap with a hyper-logarithmic field (FIG. 2). Pulsed injected ion packets rotate around the spindle electrode in order to confine ions in the radial direction, and oscillate in a nearly ideal harmonic axial field. It is relevant to the present invention that the field type and the requirement of stable orbital motion locks the relationship between characteristic length and radius of the Orbitrap, and do not allow substantial extension of a single dimension of the trap. In WO2009001909 Golikov et al, incorporated herein by reference, suggested a three-dimensional electrostatic trap (3D-E-trap) also incorporating orbital ion motion and image charge detection. However, the trap is even more complex than Orbitrap. An analytically defined electrostatic field defines 3-D curved electrodes with sizes linked in all three directions. Though linear electrostatic field (quadratic potential) of the Orbital trap extends the space charge capacity of the analyzer, still ion packets are limited to 3E+6 ions/per injection by the capacity of so-called C-trap and by the necessity to inject ion packets into the Orbitrap via a small (1 mm) aperture (Makarov el al, JASMS, v. 20, 2009, No. 8, 1391-1396, incorporated herein by reference). The orbital trap suffers slow signal acquisition—it takes one second for obtaining spectra with 100,000 resolution at m/z=1000. Slow acquisition speed, in combination with the limited charge capacity does limit the duty cycle to 0.3% in most unfavorable cases.
Thus, in the attempt of reaching high resolution, the prior art MP-TOF and E-traps do limit throughput (i.e. combination of the acquisition speed and the charge capacity) of mass analyzers under 1E+6 to 1E+7 ions per second, which limits effective duty cycle under 1%. The data acquisition speed of E-traps is limited to 1 spectrum a second at resolution of 100,000.
It is an object of at least one aspect of the present invention to obviate or mitigate at least one or more of the aforementioned problems.
It is a further object of at least one aspect of the present invention to improve the acquisition speed and the duty-cycle of high resolution electrostatic traps in order to match the intensity of modern ion sources exceeding about 1E+9 ions/sec and to bring the acquisition speed to about 50-100 spectra/sec required by tandem mass spectrometry while keeping the resolving power at about 100,000.