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U.S. Department of Energy
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New developments for direct monitoring of volatile compounds with an ion trap/time-of-flight mass spectrometer

Conference ·
OSTI ID:61901
; ;  [1]
  1. Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)
A new type of direct air-monitoring has been developed that provides real-time, trace detection of a broad range of volatile compounds. This system is being designed for low to sub-part-per-trillion detection and analysis rates of 10-100 milliseconds per scan. To achieve these objectives, an atmospheric-sampling glow discharge ionization (ASGDI) source has been combined with an ion storage trap/time-of-flight mass spectrometer (IS/TOF-MS). The ASGDI source has a high ionization efficiency for a broad class of compounds (comparable to atmospheric pressure ionization), but is separated by one less vacuum stage from the mass analyzer chamber. The ion storage trap serves to interface the ASGDI source and the TOF-MS by providing an effective means for converting the continuum ion beam into discrete pulses. TOF-MS was chosen for this application for its high transmission efficiency (i.e., near 50%) and fast analysis times (i.e., 1000 Da in under 100 {mu}s).
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-48
OSTI ID:
61901
Report Number(s):
CONF-9405234--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English