Patent ID: 7767960

Claim:
A method of analysing ions trapped in a trapping volume of a mass spectrometer, comprising: (a) applying voltages to a plurality of electrodes thereby producing a trapping field to trap a test set of ions in the trapping volume such that the trapped ions adopt oscillatory motion; (b) collecting one or more mass spectra from the trapped ions and measuring a plurality of features from peaks with different intensities from the one or more mass spectra to derive one or more characterisitics; (c) comparing the one or more measured characterisitics to one or more tolerance values; and (d) if the one or more measured characteristics meets the one or more tolerance values, applying the voltages to the plurality of electrodes to trap a set of analyte ions in the trapping volume such that the trapped ions adopt oscillatory motion; and (e) collecting one or more mass spectra from the analyte ions trapped in the trapping volume; or (f) if the one or more measured characteristics do not meet the one or more tolerance values, using the one or more measured characteristics to improve the voltages to be applied to the plurality of electrodes; and (g) repeating steps (a) through (c).