A form
of electrostatic ion trap mass analyzer, named the orbital
frequency analyzer (OFA), has been developed. The ions in the analyzer
are trapped around the middle plane and orbit around the central axis
perpendicular to the middle plane with high-ellipticity and precessing
trajectories. The orbital frequency of the ions in this device has
been optimized to be independent of ions’ energy so that the
image charge signal picked up by some of the field-forming circular/ring
electrodes can be used to produce a mass spectrum after Fourier transform
data processing. Spectra acquired by the OFA are rich of high-order
harmonics, which offer higher mass resolving power than that for fundamental
frequency components. The experiment shows that the resolving power
is proportional to the harmonic order and exceeds 150 k for mass-to-charge
ratio (m/z) of 526 Th and the transient
length of 500 ms. Using high-order harmonics, an isotopic cluster
of a heavy protein was resolved with a shorter transient length. The
transient signals from different pick-up electrodes give different
waveform shapes, and therefore, their harmonic peak distributions
in a frequency spectrum are different, thus allowing the removal of
unwanted harmonic peaks. The preliminary results also show a wide
dynamic range of the analyzer.