Miniature, High-Resolution Quadrupole Mass-Spectrometer Array: Applications to Environmental Monitoring and Control

A miniature quadrupole mass spectrometer array has been designed and tested. It consists of 16 rods in a 4 x 4 array. The ionizer is of a miniature Nier-type, and the detector is a channel-type multiplier. The demonstrated mass range is 1-300 u, and the resolution of the system is 0.1 -0.5 u (FWHM), or m/Δm = 600. The present sensitivity is measured and calculated to be approximately 1 x 10¹² counts/torr-sec. Applications to NASA missions will be outlined, along with military and commercial uses.