Newly developed compact magnetic sector mass spectrometer

Abstract

In this paper, a novel compact magnetic sector mass spectrometer has been developed and tested at the Lanzhou Institute of Physics. Its design is based on the mass separation of a 90° magnetic sector-field analyzer with a double trajectory, which has a magnetic induction of 0.7 T. The instrument can record mass range from 1 to 50 amu based on two special trajectories when the accelerating voltage of the ion source changes from 200 V to 2500 V. The dimensions of the device together with the electronic unit are approximately 220 × 165 × 165 mm3 (length × depth × height). The weight is 10.2 kg and the maximum power consumption was measured to be 20 W. The instrument successfully provided mass spectrum information on the vacuum test chamber, resolving power of about 58 at full width half maximum (FWHM), and demonstrated a sensitivity of 7.2 × 10−5 A Pa−1. The compact magnetic sector mass spectrometer is designed for space application and can be extended to other portable analytical fields on Earth.

Portable mass spectrometry system: instrumentation, applications, and path to ‘omics analysis

“…[30] designed a miniature EI source which employs two identical rhenium–tungsten filaments featuring longer lifetime and improved stability with a power consumption of 15 W. Meng et al. [31] developed the ionization chamber with a dimension of 12 × 12 × 7 mm 3 and an exit slit that is 1 mm wide. Yan et al.…”

“…In addition to developing new filament materials, research efforts have also been made to optimize and reduce the size of the EI unit [29]. Li et al [30] designed a miniature EI source which employs two identical rhenium-tungsten filaments featuring longer lifetime and improved stability with a power consumption of 15 W. Meng et al [31] developed the ionization chamber with a dimension of 12 × 12 × 7 mm 3 and an exit slit that is 1 mm wide. Yan et al [32] reported that increasing the exit slit to 1.5 mm further improved the ionization efficiency.…”

“…Sinha et al [121] reported the first miniaturized magnetic sector analyzer for coupling with portable GC instrument in 1991. here, the mass spectrograph type detection allowed high rate of ion detection rate in order to capture the GC chromatograph. The miniaturization of the analyzer was enabled by the development of powerful Nd-Fe-B type permanent magnet [31,32,122,123]. The mass range achieved was 40-240 m/z.…”

“…MCPs), and a focal plane detector have all been adopted by portable mass spectrometers.To date, EM is the most common detector used in portable MS system for quantitative analysis due to their high sensitivity and good stability in terms of signal amplification and low noise production[9,31,38,62,92,102,123,[126][127][128]. MCPs, sharing similar operation principles with EM, can provide an image of the particle distribution that EM cannot.…”

Applications of Vacuum Measurement Technology in China’s Space Programs

“…6.1. Development of a Miniature Magnetic Sector MS. Aiming at space exploration, we have developed a series of mass spectrometers, including TOF MS [68][69][70], ion trap MS [71][72][73], and magnetic sector MS (MMS) [74][75][76], among which a miniature MMS has been constructed and launched to 499 km Earth's orbit along with an experiment satellite in 2012 [76]. Compared with other mass spectrometers, MMS's advantages lie in simplicity, stability, high mass resolution and mass rejection ratio, and superior abundance sensitivity, making it a selection for atmospheric composition analysis and isotopic analysis [77].…”