Miniature cylindrical ion trap array mass spectrometer

Miniaturized Mass spectrometer (MS) is a powerful device for chemical analysis, which can be applied extensively in bioinformatics, medical analysis, network harsh environment monitoring, homeland securities and outer space physics. The advantages of miniaturized mass spectrometer system includes lower power requirement, less vacuum requirement and much lower cost, etc. In this project, a novel approach is developed to miniaturize ion analysis system, namely cylindrical ion trap, using Microelectromechanical System (MEMS) technologies to micrometer level. The design is aiming at improve the ion trapping performance such as resolution, mass range and device sensitivity. To verify so, a home designed vacuum chamber mass spectrometer system was built to test the performance of ion trapping in sub-millimeter volume and higher pressure (10^-4 torr). It is expected that miniaturized ion trap would pave the way towards a high performence portable chemical analysis device, which is capable of in-situ and real-time measurement in many industrial/ academic/ environmental areas.