Benefits of TOF Technology for ICP-MS

It should be emphasized that these performance differences between the two designs are subtle and should not detract from the overall benefits of the TOF approach for ICP-MS. As mentioned earlier, a scanning device such as a quadrupole can only detect one mass at a time, which means that there is always a compromise between number of elements, detection limits, precision, and the overall measurement time. However, with the TOF approach, the ions are sampled at the same moment in time, which means that multielement data can be collected with no significant deterioration in quality. The ability of a TOF system to capture a full mass spectrum, approximately three orders of magnitude faster than a quadrupole, translates into three major bene-hts—multielement determinations in a fast transient peak, improved precision, especially for isotope ratioing techniques, and rapid data acquisition for carrying out qualitative or semiquantitative scans. Let us look at these in greater detail. 

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