Patent · US Expired

Methods and apparatus for tandem mass spectrometry

US6107623A · kind A · utility

251Cited by
5References
31Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateAug 21, 1998
Grant dateAug 22, 2000
Priority date
Expiry dateAug 21, 2018

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH01J49/4215
  • WIPO fieldElectrical machinery, apparatus, energy
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

The invention provides methods and apparatus for tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) in which parent ions generated from a sample are passed through a mass filter (2) and are fragmented into daughter ions in fragmentation means (3), the daughter ions being passed through a discontinuous output mass analyser, such as a time-of-flight analyzer (16) or an ion storage device (29). The range of possible parent mass-to-charge ratios is split into a plurality of smaller ranges, and the mass filter (2) is set to pass ions of each smaller range in turn. A flag is set for each smaller range which produces daughter ions of interest, and the mass filter (2) is set to pass each mass-to-charge ratio of the flagged ranges so that the mass-to-charge ratios of the fragmented ions produced for each of the mass-to-charge ratios passed may be determined using the discontinuous analyser (16, 29). The flagged ranges may be themselves split into a plurality of still smaller ranges, which are correspondingly flagged.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.