Vacuum system in a mass spectrometer is like the body to a human. The properly designed vacuum system determines the footprint, costs, ion transmission efficiency, and detection sensitivity of the mass spectrometer system. Ions are generated at atmospheric pressure, after the sampling interface, transmitted through medium vacuum region, and detected at high vacuum region. During the ion transmission, ions are experiencing three different flow regimes from turbulent flow, continuous flow, and molecular flow regime. In each flow regime at different pressures as shown in the figure below, the ions have different density, mean free path, therefore different flow throughput, which determines the position of the sampling cone, the size of aperture, or the roughing/turbo molecular pump size.
HQ MasSpec has the extensive experience of designing the vacuum system with the assistance of the vacuum parameter calculations. We are pleased to provide consultancy or collaborate with your research projects.
