Crowd control of ions in the Astral analyzer

Space charge effects are the Achilles' heel of all high-resolution ion optical devices. In time-of-flight mass analyzers, these may manifest as reduction of resolving power, mass measurement shift, peak coalescence, and/or transmission losses, while highly sensitive modern ion sources and injection devices ensure that such limits are easily exceeded. Space charge effects have been investigated, by experiment and simulation study, for the astral multi-reflection analyzer, incorporating ion focusing via a pair of converging ion mirrors, and fed by a pulsed extraction ion trap. Major factors were identified as the resonant effect between ~10³ ions of similar m/z in-flight and the expansion of trapped packets of ~10^4–5 ions prior to extraction. Optimum operation and compensated ion mirror calibration strategies were then generated and described based on these findings.