Performance Investigation of Ion Trap with Various Collision Gas and Pressures

Ion trap performances were investigated based on digital ion trap technology with different collision gases and their pressures. Collision gases of helium ( M = 4 amu), nitrogen ( M = 28 amu) and argon ( M = 40 amu) with various pressures were adopted in ion excitation and dissociation stages for comparing the ion trap performances, including mass resolution, signal intensity, analysis ability of tandem mass spectrometric and low-mass cut off (LMCO) effect. The results indicated that when argon was used, the kinetic energy could be efficiently transferred and the LMCO effect was improved with higher ion capture and dissociation efficiencies except lower mass resolution. Higher mass resolution was realized with helium as collision gas. Furthermore, at the same gas pressure, heavier gas was beneficial to abundant fragment ions and structural information of precursor ion.