Abstract

In recent years the utilization of pulsed dye lasers to resonantly enhance the photoionization of chemical analytes introduced within the ion source triple grid system of a time-of-flight mass spectrometer has gained popularity. In a typical configuration of such an instrument, a pulsed valve, a laser, and the associated detection electronics must be orchestrated in time to either digitize the entire mass spectrum or monitor a single mass signal. In the former case, the mass spectrum is typically acquired by using a high-speed transient digitizer. In the latter case, a single mass is monitored by using a gated integrator (boxcar integrator). Although several commercial multichannel gate and delay generators are available to the experimentalist, the cost is sometimes prohibitive and, as we suggest below, unnecessary for such experiments.

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