The World's Leading PTR-MS Trace Analyzers Company

PTR-MS now with Patented Ion-Chemistry Quality and TRU-E/N

The proprietary TRU-E/N™ method for utmost quantification accuracy

Founded by the inventors of Proton-Transfer-Reaction – Mass Spectrometry more than 20 years ago, IONICON has always been renowned for absolutely precise control of the ion chemistry during chemical ionization.

For IONICON this fact is still true even after the introduction of Radio Frequency (RF) components for focusing and transferring the ions from the reaction region into the mass analyzer.

Several manufacturers of CIMS instruments are trying to boost the sensitivities to the high spheres in which IONICON’s PTR-MS instruments perform. However, this comes at an extremely high cost: control over the ion-chemistry is lost. Undefined fragmentation of analytes renders a comparison of results with values published in the ample PTR-MS literature and, most importantly, accurate quantification impossible. As the reduced electric field strength (E/N) in the reaction region cannot be calculated any more as soon as RF devices are implemented, no E/N values can be stated upon publishing of measurements*, which seriously limits the reproducibility of results.

IONICON integrates its sensitivity boosting ion funnels and ion guides in a highly sophisticated way, so that the ion-chemistry remains well-controllable. In order to set and measure the E/N just as easily as in standard drift tubes, the revolutionary TRU-E/N method has been patented (US 10,074,531 B2; EP 3309817 A1). By calibrating the PTR-MS instrument with the proprietary method, IONICON’s new generation high-sensitivity trace gas analyzers enable precise E/N conditions, selectivity enhancing E/N scans, well-reproducible measurement results and the highest possible level of quantification accuracy.

With the patented TRU-E/N method a whole series of instrumental parameters (RF and DC voltages) are automatically adjusted so that the resulting branching ratios resemble those known from standard PTR-MS drift tubes at a corresponding calculated E/N value, however, at the outstanding top-level sensitivity guaranteed by IONICON’s ion funnels and ion guides.
Eventually, this innovation is just another prove that only IONICON produces genuine PTR-MS instruments with ultra-high sensitivity and selectivity. Do not get fooled by any random CIMS devices, which dazzle with stupendous sensitivity values for some limited compounds but play an ion-chemistry game of chance.

IONICON Patent No. US 10,074,531 B2: “IMR-MS Device”

Learn more about the 4 ion-chemistry quality dimensions that determine genuine PTR-MS – a technology exclusively available from IONICON – and contact us for a demo or a quote.

*Some peers have tried to give an indication of the E/N during chemical ionization via H3O+ by measuring the ratio between hydronium and hydronium-water-clusters. This is a preposterous attempt, as H3O+ (H2O)n can readily cluster and break up at any point of the reaction region. Thus, only the E/N at the very last part of the reaction region is reflected by this ratio, while the overall E/N remains unknown.