Patent ID: 9683964
Date: 2017-06-20
CPC Classifications: G01N,H01J

Claim:
1. A method for operating a trapping ion mobility spectrometer, comprising the steps: (a) accumulating ions from an ion source in an RF ion trap; (b) transferring at least a subset of the accumulated ions into a trapping ion mobility separator, in which the transferred ions are radially confined by an RF field and pushed by a gas flow against a rising edge of an axial electric DC field barrier such that the transferred ions are spatially separated along the rising edge according to ion mobility; (c) successively releasing the transferred ions according to their ion mobility by decreasing the height of the electric DC field barrier while ions from the ion source are further accumulated in the RF ion trap; and (d) restoring the height of the electric DC field barrier which triggers a consecutive transfer of the accumulated ions from the RF ion trap into the trapping ion mobility separator.