Ion-Neutral Collision Effects on Ion Trapping and Pseudopotential Depth in Ion Trap Mass Spectrometry

IDSimF: An Open-Source Framework for the Simulation of Molecular Ion Dynamics in Mass Spectrometry and Ion Mobility Spectrometry

The development of mass spectrometric and ion mobility devices heavily depends on a comprehensive understanding of the behavior of ions within such systems. Therefore, numerical modeling of ion paths helps to optimize and verify existing devices, and contributes to the development of innovative ion optical systems and multipole geometries. This Article introduces IDSimF (Ion Dynamics Simulation Framework), an open-source simulation tool tailored to the nonrelativistic dynamics of molecular ions in mass and ion mobility spectrometry applications. Addressing limitations in existing software packages, as for example SIMION, OpenFOAM, and COMSOL, IDSimF offers a specialized platform for simulating ion trajectories in electric fields. IDSimF efficiently accounts for space charge effects and considers various ion-neutral collision models while handling chemical kinetics. The framework is highly modular with reduced user input configuration complexity and aims to support simulation efforts in development and optimization of in mass spectrometers.

The Resonant Excitation Process in Commercial Quadrupole Ion Traps Revisited

The collision-induced resonant excitation process in real quadrupole ion traps is revisited theoretically and experimentally by explicitly including in the discussion the influence of higher order potential impurities. This includes mainly the dependence of the secular oscillation frequency f_ion on the ion's oscillation amplitude z_max. Due to frequency calibration, commercial ion traps use excitation frequencies f_exc that are higher than the theoretical secular oscillation frequency f_ion. This may lead to switching in frequency order between f_exc and f_ion that can allow ions to stay longer in on-resonance. It is also found that there is a most efficient but also a harshest excitation frequency, which are not identical. These phenomena are explained and described with a simple harmonic oscillator model and precise numerical calculations, using the trajectory simulation program ITSIM 5.0. Experimental MS² have been performed with the thermometer ion leucine-enkephalin, which are then in line with expectations from the trajectory calculations. The important difference to the existing literature is that, here, overexcitation is characterized by the observed a₄/b₄ fragment-ion ratio, while the fragmentation efficiency was kept constant. By slightly increasing the excitation frequency one can obtain drastically different effective collisional temperatures. This knowledge gives even commercial ion traps, without instrument adjustments, the possibility of producing energetically versatile fragment ion spectra. It is also shown that the damped driven harmonic oscillator cannot be used as a simplified model of the motion during the resonant excitation process in real ion traps.

Mass Analysis Using Collective Interaction of Ions in an Ion Trap

The ion trap is a unique type of device that is used for quantum studies in physics and mass analysis in chemistry. The space charge effect, which is due to trapping of an excessive number of ions, has long been recognized to be harmful for ion manipulation or mass spectrometry analysis. Here, we show an interesting phenomenon in which the energy exchange through collective interaction between the ion species could be effectively used for ion manipulation and high-quality mass measurement. This observation not only reveals a fundamentally interesting process in ion trap operation but also suggests a new alternative means for mass analysis.

A New Measurement Method for High Voltages Applied to an Ion Trap Generated by an RF Resonator

A new method is proposed to measure unknown amplitudes of radio frequency (RF) voltages applied to ion traps, using a pre-calibrated voltage divider with RF shielding. In contrast to previous approaches that estimate the applied voltage by comparing the measured secular frequencies with a numerical simulation, we propose using a pre-calibrated voltage divider to determine the absolute amplitude of large RF voltages amplified by a helical resonator. The proposed method does not require measurement of secular frequencies and completely removes uncertainty caused by limitations of numerical simulations. To experimentally demonstrate our method, we first obtained a functional relation between measured secular frequencies and large amplitudes of RF voltages using the calibrated voltage divider. A comparison of measured relations and simulation results without any fitting parameters confirmed the validity of the proposed method. Our method can be applied to most ion trap experiments. In particular, it will be an essential tool for surface ion traps which are extremely vulnerable to unknown large RF voltages and for improving the accuracy of numerical simulations for ion trap experiments.

Liquid-Phase Ion Trap for Ion Trapping, Transfer, and Sequential Ejection in Solutions

In this study, a new method/mechanism to manipulate ions in solution was developed, based on which liquid-phase ion trap was built. In this liquid-phase ion trap, ion manipulations conventionally performed in a quadrupole ion trap or in a trapped ion mobility spectrometer placed in a vacuum were achieved in solutions. Through theoretical derivation and numerical simulation, it is found that ions have different motional characteristics than those in vacuum. Instead of a radio frequency quadrupole electric field, tunable DC electric fields together with a constant liquid flow were applied to control ion motions in solution. Different ions could be trapped and focused in a potential well, and ion densities could be increased by over 100-fold. By adjusting the DC electric field of the potential well, trapped ions could be transferred into another trapping region or sequentially released for detection. Ions released from the liquid-phase ion trap were then detected by a mass spectrometer interfaced with an electrospray ionization source. Since the ion manipulation mechanism in solution is different and complementary to that in vacuum, the use of a liquid-phase ion trap could also boost detection sensitivity and the mixture analysis capability of a mass spectrometer.

Statistical Algorithm Enables Rapid Computation of Space Charge Effect and Spectral Correction in a Miniature Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer

Computation of the space charge effect within an ion trap may cost a few days to even years in clusters. Here, we report a statistical algorithm that can compute the space charge effect within a few minutes via a personal computer, without scarifying the accuracy. The key technology developed here was an effective electric field extracted from the statistics of N ions to replace the time-consuming computation of ion-ion Coulombic interactions, therefore reducing the computational burden from ∼N² to ∼N; then, the burden was further reduced by shrinking the sampling size to N_sim = 500. For a linear ion trap (LIT) with an ion capacity N = 1 × 10 ⁵∼1 × 10⁶, this indicated an improved efficiency of N²/N_sim , i.e., 20 million∼2 billion-fold. Using the algorithm, space charge effects under different trapping conditions were explored, and the acquired knowledge enabled the spectral correction of the mass shift and peak broadening due to the effect in a miniature dual-LIT mass spectrometer.