Development of data acquisition system for quadrupole mass spectrometers

Mass spectrometer is an instrument in which ions of different masses are separated according to their mass to charge ratio. These ions are then collected at the collector of the mass spectrometer. The equivalent electrical signals obtained, give the abundance of different masses present in the given composition. Data systems are used in the mass spectrometers for control of instrument parameters and also for data acquisition and it's processing. The features of such data acquisition systems (DAS) vary with the type of mass spectrometer. The present paper describes the DAS developed by us, which have been used in the mass spectrometers where quadrupole is used as the mass analyzer, such as Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS), Resonance Ionization Mass Spectrometer (RIMS) and others. (author)