The simulation shows ions of different mass-to-charge ratios being accelerated through a fixed voltage and racing down a vacuum flight tube, visualizing how heavier or less-charged ions lag behind lighter, more highly charged ones and arrive at the detector at measurably different times.
Choose a sample mixture, adjust the accelerating voltage and flight tube length sliders, and press play to watch the ion packet separate in flight and build up a mass spectrum of abundance versus m/z as ions strike the detector.
Sample mixture select, accelerating voltage slider, flight tube length slider, play/pause
The first time-of-flight mass spectrometer was built in the late 1940s, but the technique only became practical for large biomolecules after the invention of soft ionization methods like MALDI and ESI in the late 1980s, an advance recognized with the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
The simulation shows ions of different mass-to-charge ratios being accelerated through a fixed voltage and racing down a vacuum flight tube, visualizing how heavier or less-charged ions lag behind lighter, more highly charged ones and arrive at the detector at measurably different times.
The simulation shows ions of different mass-to-charge ratios being accelerated through a fixed voltage and racing down a vacuum flight tube, visualizing how heavier or less-charged ions lag behind lighter, more highly charged ones and arrive at the detector at measurably different times.
Choose a sample mixture, adjust the accelerating voltage and flight tube length sliders, and press play to watch the ion packet separate in flight and build up a mass spectrum of abundance versus m/z as ions strike the detector.
The first time-of-flight mass spectrometer was built in the late 1940s, but the technique only became practical for large biomolecules after the invention of soft ionization methods like MALDI and ESI in the late 1980s, an advance recognized with the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.