Home▸Chemistry & Materials▸Mass Spectrometry: Weighing Molecules by Their Flight Time

🧪 Mass Spectrometry: Weighing Molecules by Their Flight Time

Discover how time-of-flight mass spectrometry ionizes and accelerates molecules through a known voltage, then times their flight down a vacuum tube to determine their mass-to-charge ratio with remarkable precision.

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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.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

🎮 How to Use

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.

💡 Did You Know?

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.

⚙ Under the hood

mass spectrometrytime of flightmass-to-charge ratioionizationchemistryanalytical chemistry

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