Augmenting Ion Trap Mass Spectrometers Using a Frequency Modulated Drift Tube Ion Mobility Spectrometer

Abstract

Historically, high pressure ion mobility drift tubes have suffered from low ion duty cycles and this problem is magnified when such instrumentation is coupled with ion trap mass spectrometers. To significantly alleviate these issues, we outline the result from coupling an atmospheric pressure, dual-gate drift tube ion mobility spectrometer (IMS) to a linear ion trap mass spectrometer (LIT-MS) via modulation of the ion beam with a linear frequency chirp. The time-domain ion current, once Fourier transformed, reveals a standard ion mobility drift spectrum that corresponds to the standard mode of mobility analysis. By multiplexing the ion beam, it is possible to successfully obtain drift time spectra for an assortment of simple peptide and protein mixtures using an LIT-MS while showing improved signal intensity versus the more common signal averaging technique. Explored here are the effects of maximum injection time, solution concentration, total experiment time, and frequency swept on signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and resolving power. Increased inject time, concentration, and experiment time all generally led to an improvement in SNR, while a greater frequency swept increases the resolving power at the expense of SNR. Overall, chirp multiplexing of a dual-gate IMS system coupled to an LIT-MS improves ion transmission, lowers analyte detection limits, and improves spectral quality.