Besides safety and
security applications, ion mobility
spectrometry
(IMS) is increasingly used in other fields such as medicine, environmental
monitoring and food quality analysis. However, some applications require
gas chromatographic separation before analysis by IMS. Furthermore,
different compounds in the sample may form positive or negative ions
during ionization and therefore simultaneous detection of both ion
polarities is highly beneficial to avoid two chromatographic runs
of the same sample. This can be achieved by ultra-fast polarity switching
of a single drift tube IMS, allowing for quasi-simultaneous detection
of both ion polarities. By using a ramped aperture voltage during
the switching process, we overcome the issue of excessive displacement
currents at the detector during polarity switching, which usually
lead to overdriving the output signal of the high-gain transimpedance
amplifier. Furthermore, mechanical aperture grid oscillations caused
by polarity switching were also reduced through the ramped aperture
voltage. This enables a polarity switching time of only 7 ms at a
drift voltage of 8 kV and a drift length of 103 mm, leading to a high
resolving power of
R
P
= 117. Requiring
50 ms to acquire a pair of positive and negative spectrum, the IMS
achieves an acquisition rate of 20 Hz. It reaches limits of detection
of 20 ppt
v
for dimethyl methylphosphonate and 40 ppt
v
for methyl salicylate. For demonstration, different hop varieties
were investigated and could be clearly differentiated by considering
both, the positive and negative spectra.