Bradbury-Nielsen vs. Field switching shutters for high resolution drift tube ion mobility spectrometers

Abstract

A key component in the design of every drift tube ion mobility spectrometer (IMS) is the ion shutter which controls the injection of ions into the drift tube. Especially, compact drift tube IMS require very short injection pulses to achieve high resolution and therefore require fast ion shutters. Thus, it is important to find an ion shutter principle that can be readily scaled towards these short injection widths without causing major non-idealities in the injection process, such as drift field inhomogeneities, ion loss and ion discrimination by mobility. In this paper, we compare different ion shutter principles, foremost the Bradbury-Nielsen gate and a field switching design. It is shown through theoretical considerations and field simulations that the Bradbury-Nielsen shutter is more universally applicable and typically less complex for long injections widths but field inhomogeneities associated with its operating principle impede the scaling process. Thus, the currently less used field switching shutters will become the superior principle when very short injection widths are required, as this shutter principle allows for single digit microsecond widths.