The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 22, 2000
Filed:
Aug. 21, 1998
Robert Harold Bateman, Cheshire, GB;
John Brian Hoyes, Stockport, GB;
Micromass Limited, Manchester, GB;
Abstract
The invention provides methods and apparatus for tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) in which parent ions generated from a sample are passed through a mass filter (2) and are fragmented into daughter ions in fragmentation means (3), the daughter ions being passed through a discontinuous output mass analyser, such as a time-of-flight analyzer (16) or an ion storage device (29). The range of possible parent mass-to-charge ratios is split into a plurality of smaller ranges, and the mass filter (2) is set to pass ions of each smaller range in turn. A flag is set for each smaller range which produces daughter ions of interest, and the mass filter (2) is set to pass each mass-to-charge ratio of the flagged ranges so that the mass-to-charge ratios of the fragmented ions produced for each of the mass-to-charge ratios passed may be determined using the discontinuous analyser (16, 29). The flagged ranges may be themselves split into a plurality of still smaller ranges, which are correspondingly flagged.