# A Novel Compact Multi-Reflecting Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer

## TL;DR

A new mass spectrometer design improves speed, accuracy, and range for analyzing complex biological samples like human blood plasma.

## Contribution

A compact multireflecting time-of-flight mass spectrometer with enhanced performance for high-resolution and high-speed analysis.

## Key findings

- The instrument achieves 100,000 FWHM resolution and 100 spectra/s acquisition speed.
- It maintains excellent linearity with a dynamic range of 105 and R² = 0.984.
- Performance is validated through isotopically labeled lipid analysis in human blood plasma.

## Abstract

Mass spectrometry is an indispensable tool for the rapid
and in-depth
analysis of complex mixtures across diverse biologically important
fields including metabolomics, lipidomics, and proteomics. These applications
demand high speed instruments with subppm mass measurement accuracy
over a wide dynamic range of sample concentrations. Here, we introduce
an liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry/MS (LC-MS/MS) quadrupole
time-of-flight mass spectrometer featuring a novel collision cell,
a high dynamic range detector, and a compact multireflecting orthogonal
time-of-flight analyzer. This innovative instrument achieves high
analytical performance, acquiring full mass range spectra at 100,000
Full Width Half Maximum (FWHM) resolution up to 100 spectra/s acquisition
speed. The instrument achieves excellent linearity within a dynamic
range of 105, with a correlation coefficient R
2 = 0.984. The speed, resolution and dynamic range are
in excellent balance as demonstrated by the analysis of isotopically
labeled lipids in human blood plasma.