Abstract
A unified approach to achieve a start-to-end ion optics simulation of an ion beam apparatus coupled to an electrospray ionization source is presented. We demonstrate that simulations enable reliable information on the behavior and operation of the apparatus to be obtained, but due to the collisions with the buffer gas in the initial stages of the setup, the results concerning the kinetic energy of the ion beam must be treated with care.
Highlights
Devices such as electrostatic lenses, deflectors, octupoles, quadrupoles, etc., are commonly installed in vacuum chambers to transport, select, and analyze ion beams over a broad range of masses, charges, and kinetic energies
Apparatuses coupled to electrospray ionization (ESI) sources are nowadays both commercially available and custom designed in research laboratories for several applications, such as particle collision and photo-ionization experiments,12–17 as well as for soft landing deposition,18 which go beyond the use of the source for analytical purposes in mass spectrometry
All these apparatuses share common features of having a first stage equipped with an entry channel, where the spray is transferred from atmospheric pressure to vacuum, and one or more stages of differential pumping followed by a combination of several sets of lenses, massover-charge selectors, ion guides, and traps depending on the application, all in all resulting in quite complex instruments with low ion transmission
Summary
Devices such as electrostatic lenses, deflectors, octupoles, quadrupoles, etc., are commonly installed in vacuum chambers to transport, select, and analyze ion beams over a broad range of masses, charges, and kinetic energies. Extremely difficult or even impossible to apply these principles to beams of finite size passing through two or more devices coupled together, especially when “non-standard” objects, whose behavior is not tabulated or cannot be analytically calculated, are included In such cases, a variety of software packages, such as SIMION7 or CPO8 among others, allow the behavior of the instruments to be simulated by the computation of the trajectories of the charged particles in the field generated by a custom assembled array of electrodes. Scitation.org/journal/rsi chaotic conditions, dragging and pushing the ions, detuning their path from the ideal one driven by the electric fields generated by the electrodes In such regions where fluid dynamics is not negligible, an ESI setup poses severe challenges to ion optics simulations, as the introduction of a static background gas is not enough to produce a realistic description. The method produces a realistic description of the behavior of the ion beam in the initial and most critical regions, due to the rough vacuum, of such an apparatus
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