title: Field Switching Combined with Bradbury-Nielsen Gate for Ion Mobility Spectrometry.
abstract: Bradbury-Nielsen gate (BNG) is commonly used in ion mobility spectrometers. It, however, transmits only a small fraction of the ions into the drift region, typically 1%. In contrast, all ions in the ionization chamber could be efficiently compressed into the drift region by the field switching gate (FSG). We report in this paper on the simultaneous use of BNG and field switching (FS) to enhance ion utilization of the BNG. In this technique, the FS collects the ions existing in the region between the FS electrode and the BNG and drives them quickly, going through the BNG in the period of gate opening. The BNG acts as the retarding field in the reported FSG to stop ions from diffusing into the drift region in the period of gate closing. Using this technique, an increase of at least 10-fold in the ion peak height without any loss of resolution is achieved for acetone compared with the BNG-only approach at a gate pulse width of 150 μs, and an even larger improvement factor of 21 is achieved for heavier DMMP dimer ions. This technique can be adapted to the current BNG-based ion mobility instruments to significantly enhance their sensitivity without any modification of the drift tube hardware.
authors.affiliation: †Key Laboratory of Separation Science for Analytical Chemistry, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Chuang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: ‡Department of Chemistry, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan 84156-83111, Iran.
authors.forename: Mahmoud
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tabrizchi
authors.affiliation: †Key Laboratory of Separation Science for Analytical Chemistry, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Weiguo
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: †Key Laboratory of Separation Science for Analytical Chemistry, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Haiyang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000096:Acetone / Q000737:chemistry; D017136:Ion Transport; D013057:Spectrum Analysis / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D000096:Acetone