Planar geometry for trapping and separating ions and charged particles

A planar quadrupole ion trap is proposed. We have demonstrated an extremely large operating range by trapping ions and particles with mass-to-charge ratio rangingfrom 10² to 10⁹ at frequencies from 2.8 × 10⁶ to 60 Hz at an operating pressure of 1.1 × 10^-4 to 760 Torr, respectively, using a trap radius of r₁ = 1 mm. We have also performed mass spectrometry with a resolution of 1.2 amu with mass-to-charge range from 50 to 150. Our geometry is simple enough to be integrated into existing integrated circuits and microelectromechanical system devices, opening up the possibility of many novel hybrid applications and experiments.