A newly developed prototype magnetic sector mass spectrometer with high resolving power

Abstract

In recent years, high-resolution mass spectrometers have been applied and made tunable to various fields. In this study, a prototype magnetic sector mass spectrometer with high resolving power has been developed. Its design is based on employing a 90̂ magnetic sector-field analyzer with double trajectory, a miniature Nier-type ion source and two channel-type electron multipliers for ion detection. The ion accelerating voltage is controllable from 200 to 2500 V and the mass range demonstrated herein is (1–73) amu. The resolution of the instrument for the lower mass channel helium and higher mass channel nitrogen is about 0.008 amu and 0.05 amu (full width at half maximum), respectively, or m/Δ m ≈550 in the whole mass range of (1–40) amu. The present sensitivity is measured to be approximately 8.4 × 10−5 A/Pa.