Although these analyzers were invented in the 1940s, they were worthless until soft ionization techniques like MALDI (“MAWL-dee”) became popular in the 2000s. For 10 points each:
[10m] Name these mass analyzers that excite all fragment ions to the same kinetic energy and then measure their velocities over a fixed linear distance.
ANSWER: time-of-flight mass analyzers [or TOF mass spectrometry]
[10e] For every fragmented ion, the measured time-of-flight is used to compute the ratio of the ion’s mass to this quantity.
ANSWER: charge [accept mass-to-charge ratio or m-over-z]
[10h] TOF (“toff”) analyzers are also used by materials scientists as detectors for this technique. This technique uses a charged microscope tip to ionize a surface and detect its molecular composition with excellent spatial resolution.
ANSWER: atom probe tomography [or APT; prompt on tomography]
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