Technical data

42 Agilent 6200 Series TOF and 6500 Series Q-TOF LC/MS System Concepts Guide
1Overview
Front-end ion optics
operation so that ions having different initial velocities still
arrive simultaneously at the detector.
Because the calculation for the mass of each ion depends on its
flight time in the flight tube, the background gas pressure must
be very low. Any collision of an ion with residual gas slows the
ion on its path to the detector and affects the accuracy of the
mass calculation.
Ion detection Figure 18 shows a schematic of the
Agilent 6500 Series Q-TOF
LC/MS
detector.
Figure 18 Agilent 6200 Series TOF or 6500 Series Q-TOF detector, with
potentials shown for positive operation
At the surface of the ion detector is a microchannel plate
(MCP), a very thin plate containing a set of microscopic tubes
that pass from the front surface to the rear of the plate. When
an ion hits the front surface of the MCP, an electron escapes and
begins the process of electrical signal amplification. As freed
electrons collide with the walls of the microscopic tubes, an