A Segmented Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer

Abstract

The present paper describes the design of a time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOFMS) in which the single flight tube of a conventional TOFMS has been replaced by several cylindrical electrostatic lenses in tandem. By a judicious choice of voltages on these lenses, an improved TOFMS has been realized which has a superior mass and energy resolution, shorter flight lengths, excellent signal-to-noise ratio and less stringent requirements on the bias voltages.