Free Application Note: How Counting Statistics and the
ADC Sampling Interval Control Mass Accuracy in
Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry

 OAK RIDGE, TN, July 23, 2001– The new application note, AN61 How Counting Statistics and the ADC Sampling Interval Control Mass Accuracy in Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry, is available free of charge from ORTEC. AN61 investigates and defines the relative importance of the random error caused by ion counting statistics, and the systematic error caused by the sampling interval, when determining the position of a peak in a spectrum that has been recorded by a digital signal averager. The results reveal that the systematic sampling error is virtually always negligible compared to the random error from ion counting statistics. It also demonstrates that interleaved 2_GS/s sampling with a single 500_MS/s ADC yields the same statistical precision as 2_GS/s sampling with four parallel 500_MS/s ADCs, but at a fraction of the cost.