Simulation aided design of a low cost ion mobility spectrometer based on printed circuit boards

Miniaturized low-cost drift tubes with high analytical performance are a key component for the design of powerful and mass-deployable hand-held ion mobility spectrometers. Thus, a simple model that estimates the influence of the geometrical dimensions on the analytical performance is highly desirable for an effective design process. In this work, we present a simple procedure to predict peak distortion based on only the electrical field distribution inside the drift tube, which can be rapidly simulated using the finite element method. A simulation of the ion motion is not required. Based on these results, we developed an ion mobility spectrometer manufactured entirely from standard printed circuit boards (PCB). Since no additional components were used apart from electrical and gas connectors, ion source and metal grids, the presented ion mobility spectrometer is very simple and inexpensive. Nevertheless, the design provides a resolving power of 82 at a drift length of 50 mm and a drift voltage of 3 kV using a tritium ion source and a field switching shutter. The limits of detection for one second of averaging are 80 ppt(v) for acetone, 35 ppt(v) for dimethyl methylphosphonate and 180 ppt(v) for methyl salicylate.