Electronics of an ion trap with integrated time-of-flight mass spectrometer

Abstract

Recently, we reported an ion trap experiment with an integrated time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOFMS) [1] focusing on the improvement of mass resolution and detection limit due to sample preparation at millikelvin temperatures. The system utilizes a radio-frequency (RF) ion trap with asymmetric drive for storing and manipulating laser-cooled ions and features radial extraction into a compact 275mm long TOF drift tube. The mass resolution exceeds m/Δm=500, which provides isotopic resolution over the whole mass range of interest in current experiments and constitutes an improvement of almost an order of magnitude over other implementations. In this article, we discuss the experimental implementation in detail, which is comprised of newly developed drive electronics for generating the required voltages to operate RF trap and TOFMS, as well as control electronics for regulating RF outputs and synchronizing the TOFMS extraction.