A tandem mass spectrometer for crossed-beam irradiation of mass-selected molecular systems by keV atomic ions.

In the present paper, we describe a new home-built crossed-beam apparatus devoted to ion-induced ionization and fragmentation of isolated biologically relevant molecular systems. The biomolecular ions are produced by an electrospray ionization source, mass-over-charge selected, accumulated in a 3D ion trap, and then guided to the extraction region of an orthogonal time-of-flight mass spectrometer. Here, the target molecular ions interact with a keV atomic ion beam produced by an electron cyclotron resonance ion source. Cationic products from the collision are detected on a position sensitive detector and analyzed by time-of-flight mass spectrometry. A detailed description of the operation of the setup is given, and early results from irradiation of a protonated pentapeptide (leucine-enkephalin) by a 7 keV He+ ion beam are presented as a proof-of-principle.