DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR A SPECTROMETER

摘要

A data acquisition system (20) and method are described that may be used with various spectrometer systems (10). The data acquisition system may include an ion detector (42) and a processing circuit. The processing circuit may include an initial processing module (22) and a spectra processing module (26). According to one embodiment, the spectra processing module generates stick spectra and supplies the stick spectra to an external processor (27). The stick spectra comprise a peak intensity, resolution, and a location in the spectra for each detected peak. The initial processing module may contiguously sample the ion detection signals at a rate matched to the capabilities of the ion detector (up to at least 1.5 GHz) over a full spectral range. The spectra processing module may receive the processed signals and generate spectra from the processed signals at a rate matched to the time response of the separation techniques (up to 200 spectra/second).