A Quadrupole in Wide Band-Pass Mode

A hexapole assembly of rods (poles) is built similarly to the quadrupole, but now there are three sets of opposed rods evenly spaced around a central axis. The hexapole cannot act as a mass filter by applying a DC field and is used only in its all-RF mode. It is therefore a wide band-pass filter and is used to collimate an ion beam. (Like-charged particles repel each other, and an electrically charged beam will tend to spread apart because of mutual repulsion of ions unless steps are taken to reduce the effect.) 

For the sake of illustration, a TOF analyzer could be likened to a camera taking snapshots of the m/z values of an assembly (beam) of ions the faster the repetition rate at which the camera shutter is clicked, the greater is the number of mass spectra that can be taken in a very short time. For TOF analyzers, it is not uncommon to measure several thousand mass spectra in one second All such spectra can be added to each other digitally, a process that improves the signal-to-noise ratio in the final accumulated total. 

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