Department of Chemistry, Fudan University, 220 Handan Road, Shanghai 200433, China.
Anal Chem. 2013 Jun 18;85(12):6041-6. doi: 10.1021/ac400864k. Epub 2013 Jun 5.
An ion trap (IT) mass analyzer can be simply built with low cost material-the printed circuit board (PCB). A printed circuit board ion trap (PCBIT) can perform ion trapping, mass analysis, and tandem mass spectrometry as a conventional ion trap mass analyzer. In a PCBIT, each PCB electrode was fabricated to specially designed patterns with several separate electric strips. The strips' electrodes were insulated from each other and applied with different voltages during the experiment. Therefore, the electric field distribution inside the ion trap region may be adjusted and optimized by simply adjusting the voltage on each strip. The performance of the PCBIT can also be optimized since the property of an ion trap is strongly dependent on the field distribution. The fabrication, operation, and performance of the PCBIT are described and characterized in this paper. A prototype PCBIT was built with two pairs of 64 mm × 12 mm PCB rectangular plates and one pair of 10 mm × 10 mm stainless steel square plates. A mass analysis with a resolving power of over 1500 and a mass range of around 3000 Th was observed. The mass-selected isolation and collision-induced dissociation (CID) of ions were also tested using the homemade PCBIT system. The adjustable electric field distribution, simple structure, and low cost of PCBIT make it certainly suitable for the further miniaturization of the portable mass spectrometer.
离子阱（IT）质量分析仪可以用低成本的材料——印刷电路板（PCB）简单地构建。印刷电路板离子阱（PCBIT）可以像传统的离子阱质量分析仪一样进行离子捕获、质量分析和串联质谱分析。在 PCBIT 中，每个 PCB 电极都用具有几个独立的电条的特殊设计图案制成。在实验过程中，这些电条的电极彼此绝缘，并施加不同的电压。因此，通过简单地调整每条电条上的电压，可以调整和优化离子阱区域内的电场分布。由于离子阱的性能强烈依赖于电场分布，因此还可以优化 PCBIT 的性能。本文描述并表征了 PCBIT 的制造、操作和性能。使用两块 64mm×12mm 的 PCB 矩形板和一对 10mm×10mm 的不锈钢方板构建了一个原型 PCBIT。观察到超过 1500 的分辨率和大约 3000 Th 的质量范围的质量分析。还使用自制的 PCBIT 系统测试了离子的质量选择隔离和碰撞诱导解离（CID）。PCBIT 的可调电场分布、简单的结构和低成本使其非常适合便携式质谱仪的进一步小型化。
