That Is a Mass Spectrometer?

Abstract

Mass spectrosoopes are instruments used to determine masses of charged particles. These instruments are used for such things as determination of the chemical composition of compounds and accurate measurement of isotopic masses and their abundances. Such close determinations of isotopic masses have played an important part in the development of modern physics. The basis of mass spectroscopes is the action of force fields on charged particles. Different instruments apply these forces in different ways to beams of these charged particles. In all mass speotroscopes, however, the three main functional parts are the ion source, the analyzer, and the detector.