Abstract: A guide apparatus includes a vacuum compartment provided at a background pressure and having a gas inlet opening arranged for jetting a gas in the form of a free jet stream containing entrained ions into a vacuum chamber along a predetermined jetting axis. At least one duct housed within the vacuum chamber has a guide bore positioned coaxially with the jetting axis for receiving the free jet stream such that a supersonic free jet is formed in the duct with a jet pressure ratio P1/P2 restrained to a value that does not exceed (A/a)3 to form a subsonic laminar gas flow inside of the duct for guiding the entrained ions, where P1 is the pressure at an exit end of the gas inlet opening, P2 is the background pressure, A is the cross sectional area of the bore, and a is the cross sectional area of the gas inlet opening.

Abstract: The present disclosure relates to mass spectrometers and, in particular, multipole ion guides and control units that set the RF and DC potentials at the ion guide to, among other uses, radially confine an ion beam. In an exemplary embodiment, the ion guide includes a plurality of circumferentially arranged elongated rods disposed about a common axis that form a plurality of longitudinally traversing segments. At least a first and a second subset of the segments have an equal number of elongated rods and are physically configured to receive a first and a second set of EMF from a control unit that results in a first multipolar field order distribution and a second multipolar field distribution, respectively, being produced that are different from one another.

Abstract: The present disclosure relates to mass spectrometers and ion mobility spectrometers and methods for utilizing them and, in particular, to efficient detection of large size ionic species by attaching fluorescent agents to such species and utilizing high intensity light and appropriate optics to define a detection plane. A mechanism to detect fluorescence photons with high efficiency is coupled thereto. In an exemplary embodiment, a mass or ion mobility analyzer is utilized to separate fluorescent ionic species in space or time. The ionic species absorb and re-emit photons as they transverse the detection plane. The photons are directed to a photon detector that generates an electric signal that defines time or position (or position and time of intersection) of ionic species with the detection plane.