Patent ID: 8581177

Claim:
A high duty cycle ion storage/ion mobility mass spectrometer, comprising: an ion source; a first ion interface instrument partitioned into a first region and a second region so as to be configured as a two-dimensional (2D) plurality of sequentially arranged confinement channels having predetermined spatial locations provided by desired DC and RF potentials, wherein a first confinement channel of said first region is configured to receive ions of a predetermined mass window from said ion source and one or more confinement channels (N 1 ) configured within said second region is designed, via ion mobility transport, to receive and thereafter confine selected ions of a smaller fraction of the mass range of said predetermined mass window once a desired number of ions within a given mass range have been evenly distributed into said first region; a second ion interface instrument additionally partitioned into a (2D) plurality of sequentially arranged confinement channels (N 2 ) also having predetermined spatial locations provided by desired DC and RF potentials, wherein any of said (2D) plurality of sequentially arranged confinement channels (N 2 ) is configured to transversely receive selected ions of a smaller fraction of the mass range of said predetermined mass window from said one or more confinement channels (N 1 ) configured within said second region of said first ion interface instrument, said second ion interface instrument being additionally configured to transfer such selected ions to successive ion confinement channels; and one or more mass analyzers having an entrance configured to receive ions transferred from one or more predetermined confinement channels of said second ion interface instrument to enable high throughput mass analysis.