A novel driving mode for ion shutter based on alternating current superposition and its application to ion mobility spectrometry

• A novel driving mode for the ion shutter based on the alternating current (AC) superposition was designed.
• A simple and low cost power supply for controlling ion shutter was designed and fabricated using the AC superposition driving mode.
• The novel driving AC superposition mode was proved to be feasible and promising, and its effect on the performance of IMS was discussed in detail combined with the simulated results and numerical calculation.

In order to simplify the design of an ion shutter power supply and decrease its cost, a simple ion shutter driving mode based on alternating current (AC) superposition mode was designed. A power supply with AC superposition was fabricated and applied to the ion mobility spectrometry instrument successfully. The effect of the AC superposition mode on the drift time, ion intensity, and resolution of the ion mobility spectra was studied. Combined with electric field simulation and numerical calculation, a reasonable explanation for the effect of the AC superposition mode on the performance of ion mobility spectrometry is given. Two equations have been fitted by exponential fitting to correct the offset of the drift time. Cyclo-1,3,5-trimethylene-2,4,6-trinitramine (RDX) has been investigated to validate the effectiveness of the correction by using corona discharge IMS combined with the new ion shutter driving mode. The results show that the new low-cost power supply based on AC superposition mode is feasible.