Power Supply for Miniature Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer

A lightweight, low-power-consumption power supply has been developed to generate a combination of radio-frequency (RF) and dc voltages needed for the operation of a miniature quadrupole mass spectrometer that could operate unattended in the field for a long time, possibly using a battery as an energy source. More specifically, the circuit is designed to supply large, variable, frequency- and amplitude-stable RF voltages, variously floating or superimposed on positive or negative dc voltages, for application to primarily capacitive mass-spectrometer loads with capacitances of the order of 50 pF.