Analyzers Time-of-Flight Technology

The Guardian Explosives Detection Security Portal (Fig. 6) is manufactured and marketed by Syagen Technology, Inc., of Tustin, CA [48], This portal was the result of two research and development efforts that included collaboration between Syagen and Sandia National Laboratories, funded by TSL, and a project at Sandia, funded by DOE [33,49], The detector utilized in the portal is a quadrupole ion trap, time-of-flight (QitTof ) mass analyzer [50,51], The mass analyzer identifies explosives by time-of-flight and mass-to-charge (m/z) ratio, which increases the accuracy of the identification of the explosive. The foundation of the sample collection method in this portal is an air shower [52],... 

The sample inlet is constituted of a heated fused silica capillary, which is maintained at approximately 200 "C and is encased in a flexible tube. The ion source, in the case of electronic ionization, is composed of electrically heated metallic filaments. Mass analyzers, separating the analytes, include time-of-flight (TOF), linear quadmpole (Q), linear quadrupole ion trap (LIT), quadmpole ion trap (QIT), Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR), etc. These detectors differ in their capacity to treat ion beams in a continuous or pulsed (TOF). Quadmpole mass analyzers stabilize and destabilize the ion paths with an oscillating electrical field. A triple quad is more recent technology and consists of three quadmpole stages. Quadmpole ion traps will sequentially eject ions that have been trapped in a ring electrode between two endcap electrodes. 

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