Wein filter. In Wien filter mass separation is done with crossed homogeneous electric and magnetic fields perpendicular to ionized cluster beam. The net force on a charged cluster with mass M, charge Q, and velocity v vanishes if E = Bv/c. The cluster ions are accelerated by a voltage V to an energy QV. Passing through the filter, clusters with M/Q = 2V/(Ec/B) are un-deflected. The un-deflected cluster ions are selected with appropriately positioned collimators.
Quadrupole mass filter. The quadrupole mass filter operates on the principle that ion trajectories in a two-dimensional quadrupole field are stable if the field has an AC component superimposed on a DC component with appropriate amplitudes and frequencies. It is responsible for filtering sample ions based on their mass-to-charge ratio.
Time of flight mass spectroscopy. Time-of-flight spectroscopy consists of an ion gun, a field-free drift space and an ion cluster source. The neutral clusters are ionized, typically using pulsed laser or an electron beam. The ion gun accelerates the ions that pass through the field-free drift space (flight tube) and ultimately impinge on an ion detector. Usually an oscilloscope records the arrival time of the ions. The mass is calculated from the measured time of flight.
Molecular beam chromatography. In this method, cluster ions produced in a laser vaporized cluster source are mass selected and introduced in a long inert-gas-filled drift tube with an entrance and exit aperture. Since cluster mobility depends upon the collision rate with the inert gas, they are sensitive to the cluster shape and size.