The use of stability bands to improve the performance of quadrupole mass filters

Abstract

The possibility of increasing the resolving power of quadrupole mass filters has been discussed. It has been shown that the limitations associated with the finite time of flight imposed by Von Zahn’s rule are modified while using the islands of stability that appear when quadrupole is excited by the additional signals. By calculation of the exponential increment of growth of the oscillation amplitude the effect of the acceleration of mass separation and improvement of the peak shape, when the islands of stability are used for ion filtering, is explained. The case of the excitation by two signals at different frequencies has been studied theoretically. The conditions under which suppression of the first order resonance for one of the directions of motion is obtained. The direct modeling of the peak shape of the mass filter shows the possibility of obtaining a resolution of 10,000 with a time of flight of ions through the quadrupole of 100 cycles of the main RF supply, and low sensitivity of the new operating mode to the nonlinear field distortions in the quadrupoles with rods of circular cross sections.