The curved-field reflectron: PSD and CID without scanning, stepping or lifting

The curved-field reflectron (CFR), developed initially to improve focusing of product ions in a dual reflectron tandem time-of-flight (RTOF/RTOF) mass spectrometer, has been used for several years in single analyzer instruments for the focusing of ions produced by post-source decay (PSD) without stepping the reflectron voltage. More recently, the addition of a collision chamber to a commercial instrument that incorporates the CFR enables both PSD and collision-induced dissociation (CID) mass spectra to be obtained in a tandem instrument without decelerating the primary ions or reaccelerating product ions to accommodate the limited energy bandwidth of the reflectron. In the PSD or laser-induced dissociation (LID) mode, i.e., without a collision gas, nearly complete b- and y-series ions are observed, which is illustrated here in the MS/MS spectra of peptides obtained in the determination of the lysine acetylation sites in a histone acetyl transferase (HAT) protein. Addition of the collision gas produces similar mass spectra, though higher collision gas pressure increases the intensities of lower mass and internal fragments, both of which appear to result from multiple collisions. In addition N-terminal sulfonation of the peptides obtained from tryptic digests produces exclusive y-series ions in the product ion mass.