Considerations for design of a Fourier transform mass spectrometer in the 4.2 K cold bore of a superconducting magnet

An external source Fourier transform mass spectrometer (FTMS) constructed inside the vertical cold bore of a superconducting magnet will have dramatic advantages in effective magnetic field, noise figures, and base pressure over current commercially available external source FTMS systems. There are substantial, but solvable, difficulties in the design, primarily with regard to control of the helium boiloff rate to an acceptable level, as well as relatively minor design challenges with heat sinks, contraction of metallic ion optic elements in the extreme temperature, and tandem mass spectrometry experiments. However, the ability to construct the FTMS inside the narrow bore tube of existing, commercially available vertical bore NMR magnets will allow access to the upper magnetic field limit currently used by 900 MHz (21 Tesla) - 1 GHz (23.3 Tesla) NMR experiments. The vacuum system, simply by being held inside the cold bore at 4.2 K, will cryopump itself dropping base pressures substantially, and heat sinking the input resistor of the preamplifier to this cryogenically cooled vacuum chamber will allow reduction of the input Johnson noise by a factor of 8.4 with associated 8.4-fold improvement in signal/noise, sensitivity, and dynamic range. The simultaneous improvement of three fundamental limiting factors in the FTMS (field strength, base pressure, and Johnson noise figure) will clearly outweigh the concomitant increased helium boiloff rate particularly if this rate can be dropped to the estimated <5 L/day range. The additional use of modern cryorefrigerators will further reduce helium boiloff to zero except during MS(n) experiments and system cooldown.