Ion gating remains a critical aspect of drift tube IMS experiment and a range of clever approaches have been used the past. However, most techniques use a physical grid to modulate the ion beam. In collaboration with Steve Kenyon and Keith Gendreau we’ve adapted a modulated x-ray source to printed circuit board IMS. Though there is still room for improvement, the initial results look quite promising. Interestingly, because the source is now located orthogonal to the drift axis, a new term is added to the descriptors of peak width. What we’re most excited about, however, is the fact that because we no longer have a physical ion gate, some of the capacitive coupling during the pulsing of a standard ion gate is now effectively eliminated–enter artifact-free multiplexing…
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