Staub C., Plaut O.

Unité de Toxicologie, Institut Universitaire de Médecine Légale, 9, avenue de Champel, CH-1211, Geneva, Switzerland

A new easy-to-use benchtop GC-MS is now available for the toxicologist. This benchtop (Varian's Saturn 2000) is based
on the so-called ion trap technology. In this type of mass spectrometer a radio-frequency (rf) is applied on a ring electrode and as this rf value is increased, ions of lower m/z values are destabilized and pass into the detector.
With the previous mass analyzers (magnetic sectors and quadrupoles), the ions are then separated following their mass-to-charge ratio in space. Now in the ion trap Saturn 2000 these ions are not separated in space, but in time.
Therefore the main advantages of this system are the following:

1. high sensitivity due to internal ionization.
2. simplicity, by switching from EI to CI without hardware changes.
3. no lenses for accelarating the ions and collimating the ion beam.
4. the possibility of doing MS/MS with the same apparatus.
5. and last but not least its low cost.