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

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 <i>R</i>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.