Synonyms
Mass analyzer
Definition
A mass spectrometer is a vacuum analytical instrument that uses electric or magnetic fields or a mixture of the two to separate ions based on the ratio of their mass m to their charge q. A distinction is made between mass spectrometers, which produce a serially scanned output, and mass spectrographs, which produce a parallel (and sometimes graphical) output. The mass-to-charge ratio is often written as m/z, where q = ze, e = 1.6 ⋅ 10−19 C is the electronic charge, and z is the charge number. The ions are created from analyte molecules by processes that give rise to a characteristic pattern of fragments, in addition to the molecular ion itself, allowing a mass spectrometer to be used for chemical identification, compositional quantification, and structural analysis. Performance is characterized in terms of the mass range (defined by the maximum mass m max that can be measured), the mass resolution (defined as m/Δm, where Δmis the uncertainty in the...
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Syms, R.R.A. (2015). Mass Spectrometry on a Chip. In: Li, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Microfluidics and Nanofluidics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5491-5_858
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5491-5_858
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