Characterizing the resolution and accuracy of a second-generation traveling-wave ion mobility separator for biomolecular ions

High-accuracy, high-resolution ion mobility measurements enable a vast array of important contemporary applications in biological chemistry. With the recent advent of both new, widely available commercial instrumentation and also new calibration datasets tailored for the aforementioned commercial instrumentation, the possibilities for extending such high performance measurements to a diverse set of applications have never been greater. Here, we assess the performance characteristics of a second-generation traveling-wave ion mobility separator, focusing on those figures of merit that lead to making measurements of collision cross-section having both high precision and high accuracy. Through performing a comprehensive survey of instrument parameters and settings, we find instrument conditions for optimized drift time resolution, cross-section resolution, and cross-section accuracy for a range of peptide, protein and multi-protein complex ions. Moreover, the conditions for high accuracy IM results are significantly different from those optimized for separation resolution, indicating that a balance between these two metrics must be attained for traveling wave IM separations of biomolecules. We also assess the effect of ion heating during IM separation on instrument performance.