Development of a miniature magnetic sector mass spectrometer

A miniaturized magnetic sector mass spectrometer has been developed and tested. The instrument was designed the number two filament in ion source, in order to avoid failure of the number one filament. It has a 90° magnetic sector-field analyzer with double trajectory, which has a magnetic flux density of 0.65 T. Two special trajectories are selected to cover the mass ranges, 1–12 amu and 6–50 amu. The mass spectrometer’s overall size, including the magnet assembly, is 250 mm wide, 250 mm long and 160 mm tall, it weighs 2.5 kg, and its power consumption was measured to be 15 W. It was able to attain a mass resolution of 56 at full-width at half-maximum and a sensitivity of 7.7 × 10−5 A/Pa. The resulting design is small, lightweight, and has low power consumption. All these characteristics make this miniature mass spectrometer suitable for space applications and chemical analysis and also for field applications on earth.

► The instrument was designed the number two filament in ion source.
► A 90° magnetic analyzer with double trajectory.
► An algorithm was developed to generate a temperature compensation that modifies the ion acceleration voltage.