A universal relationship between optimum drift voltage and resolving power

The drift voltage is one of the key experimental parameters of any drift tube ion mobility spectrometer. In this work, we show that a universal relationship between optimum drift voltage and the resolving power reached at this point exists, governed only by temperature and ion charge state. With these two quantities known, the measured optimum drift voltage and resolving power combination can be used to estimate the ideality of the drift conditions inside a drift tube, since any deviation from the theoretical values must be caused by non-idealities in the ions' drift. Analyzing drift voltage sweeps from nine different ion mobility spectrometers, a continuous increase in drift tube ideality over the past is observed, reaching from less than 50% thirty years ago to 99% for a current design based on printed circuit boards. Furthermore, possible causes for the observed non-idealities are discussed.