An rf-carpet electrospray ion source to provide isobaric mass calibrants for trans-uranium elements

TL;DR

This paper presents an rf-carpet electrospray ion source designed to generate isobaric mass calibrants for trans-uranium elements, enabling precise mass measurements despite the absence of stable atomic isobars.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel rf-carpet electrospray ion source that efficiently produces molecular ions for isobaric calibration of trans-uranium elements, improving mass spectrometry accuracy.

Findings

Achieved a resolving power of Rm ≥ 100,000 with the MRTOF-MS.

Successfully collected and analyzed molecular ions suitable as isobaric references.

Simplified ion transport system using the rf-carpet.

Abstract

For trans-uranium elements, stable atomic isobars do not exist. In order to provide isobaric reference ions for the mass measurement of trans-uranium elements, an electrospray ion source (ESI) was combined with an rf-carpet to collect molecular ions efficiently. The rf-carpet allows for simplification of the pumping system to transport ions from the ESI to a precision mass analyzer. Molecular ions appropriate for isobaric references of trans-uranium elements were extracted from the rf-carpet and analyzed by a multi-reflection time-of-flight mass spectrograph (MRTOF-MS) with a resolving power of $\rm{R_m} \gtrsim100,000$.