Time of Flight

A time of flight mass spectrometer first accelerates particles to a given kinetic energy (KE) with an electric field. At the end of the acceleration region, particles will have obtained the same KE but different velocities depending on mass (KE = (1/2) m v^2). The particles are then flown through a field free region. Due to their different velocities, they arrive at the detector at different times, which allows measuring their mass to charge (m/z) ratio.

SIMION Specific

See the SIMION Example: tof - basic TOF example in SIMION.

Screenshots are below.

3D view of time of flight system.

Cutway to see particle inside reflectron.

PE view of reflectron.

See Also

• SIMION Example: tof

• Session 4 “Time of Flight” in the Short ASMS Course (courses\short folder in the SIMION 8.0 program directory and also included in SIMION 7.0).

• Mass Spectrometry

• Wikipedia: Time-of-flight_mass_spectrometry