Overview of Mass Analyzer

After samples are ionized in a source box, the mass analyzer separates the ions according to their m/z value.

The most common mass spectrometer is the quadrupole (QP) type, which is ideal as a practical and inexpensive instrument because of its compactness, easy operation, easy maintenance, high sensitivity, fast scan rate and moderate vacuum requirement. These points are advantageous to connecting a chromatographic instrument, such as a GC or LC, to a mass spectrometer despite of the limited ability on mass resolution and mass range of the quadrupole mass spectrometer.