Ion Trap Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

The quadrupole ion trap is a mass spectrometer whose essential components can be held in one hand. But it has a mass range of about 105 daltons per charge, provides molecular weight and structural information on biopolymers, and has the greatest sensitivity of all mass spectrometers. These features, however, have become available only within the past few years. They stem from an almost neglected 1958 invention, one in which interest was maintained by only a few research groups, notably those of John Todd at the University of Kent in England and Ray March at Trent University in Canada. Development of a new scanning method by George Stafford and his coworkers of Finnigan Corp. provided the impetus that led Finnigan to introduce a commercial ion trap in 1983. Since then, the device has been transformed from a simple gas chromatography detector to a high-performance mass spectrometer. In the late 1950s, Wolfgang Paul and his coworkers at ...