Computer simulation of time-of-flight mass spectrometers: calculations of mass spectra and spatial distributions of ions

In the present work, an advanced algorithm to simulate complex ion optical systems is described, and results of its application to time-of-flight mass spectrometers with laser post-ionization of secondary neutrals are presented. To examine ion optics designs for such instruments and to find optimized solutions, a combination of charged particle optics modeling software (for simulating large sets of ion trajectories) and database software (for processing results of the simulations with database management routines) was introduced and used to aid the design of new instruments developed at Argonne National Laboratory.