Design and Simulation of a Double Potential Well Flat Ion Trap

A double potential well flat ion trap was designed as an ion accumulating and focusing device for multi-reflection time-of-flight mass analyzer. Two potential wells of the trap were severally used for accumulation of injected ions, controlled cooling and ejection of trapped ions, which had features to accumulate ions continuously and cool ion for almost one period. While a flat ion trap with only one potential well is a traditional and excellent ion accumulating and focusing device, which has an intermittent ion accumulation and an ion cooling around half period. Compared with the single potential well flat ion trap, the double potential well flat ion trap had better performance on ion accumulation and focusing in principle. Four steps to run the trap were simulated and researched by an ion optics simulator of SIMION 8.1. The first step was ion accumulation, ions were successively injected into the trap, and then stored and accumulated in the first potential well. The second step was ion transfer, the trapped ions were transferred from the first potential well to the second potential well. The third step was ion cooling, the trapped ions were confined in the second potential well, and were simultaneously cooled by collisions with 0.5 Pa He. The fourth step was ion ejection, the trapped ions were ejected from the trap and focused into the next device. Ion optics simulations indicated that the trap had a period from 1 ms to above 10 ms, a total ion transmission efficiency of 83%, and an ion flux of at most 1.6×106 ions. In addition, ion packets ejected from the trap had thermalized with radial diameters of 1.0 and 1.0 mm, angular standard deviations of 24 mrad and 16 mrad, and an energy standard deviation of 15 eV. This trap can be coupled with and provide high-flux and full-focusing ion packets for multi-reflection time-of-flight mass analyzers, due to an excellent suitability between the operation of the analyzer and the period, the ion transmission efficiency, the ion flux, and ejected ion packets of the trap.