Zero Taper Cutting! How to Achieve Precision Machining of Mass Spectrometer Slits ?
In scientific instruments exploring the microscopic world, the mass spectrometer...
MONO | 2025-05
INDUSTRY
In scientific instruments exploring the microscopic world, the mass spectrometer plays a vital role. Like the "sharp eyes" of scientists, it can directly measure the atomic weight and molecular weight of substances, serving as an indispensable basic tool in modern scientific research and representing a country's strength in high-tech fields. Whether determining the chemical composition of a sample (qualitative analysis) or accurately measuring the content of each substance (quantitative analysis), the mass analyzer of a mass spectrometer relies on a seemingly small but crucial component - the slit.The slit creates a micron-level channel through a pair of stainless steel baffles, functioning to focus ion beams and filter the movement trajectories of ions.
The width of the slit controls the focusing precision of the ion beam, directly affecting the resolution and mass accuracy of the mass spectrometer. In the medical detection field, high-precision breakthroughs enable more accurate detection of complex small-molecule markers in the human body, providing technical support for the diagnosis of chronic diseases such as thyroid diseases and diabetes. Although traditional processing methods can achieve precision within hundreds of microns, manufacturing ultra-narrow and high-quality mass spectrometer slits still faces the following challenges:
1. Rough Contact Surface: Burrs and cracks caused by uneven force and thermal effects lead to scattered ions, interfering with detection signals.
2. Inability to Achieve Zero Taper: Traditional laser cutting has a taper (inconsistent upper and lower slit widths), causing ion flow deflection and directly affecting the accuracy of detection results.
How can we cut high-precision, zero-taper, and burr-free high-quality slits?Facing the challenges of traditional processes, Mono Laser's femtosecond laser processing system has successfully broken through technical barriers by virtue of its unique advantages. It has successfully cut slits with a width of only 15µm on 50µm-thick black stainless steel sheets, with a precision of ±1µm, achieving true zero-taper cutting and smooth, burr-free cutting edges.
Due to the uneven energy distribution of Gaussian beams, traditional laser cutting easily forms a "V"-shaped slit that is wider at the top and narrower at the bottom, making taper unavoidable. Mono Laser uses special beam shaping technology to modulate the laser beam before focusing (for example, transforming a Gaussian beam into a top-hat beam or performing more complex phase modulation), allowing the laser to act on the material uniformly at an oblique incidence, precisely controlling the focal position and energy distribution to achieve zero-taper cutting with equal upper and lower widths (precision ±1μm).
（doi.org/10.1016/j.jmrt.2023.12.049）
Femtosecond lasers (with a pulse duration of 10⁻¹⁵ seconds) focus energy on the material surface in an extremely short time, instantly vaporizing tiny areas, with the thermal diffusion effect limited to the nanometer scale (the heat-affected zone approaches zero). This "cold processing" feature avoids material melting or deformation, resulting in smooth, burr-free cutting edges. Even when processing slits with a line width of 5μm, it can maintain vertical sidewalls without micro-cracks or oxidation.
Reducing the slit width to improve resolution is often accompanied by a sacrifice in throughput. A precisely mathematically designed slit array can significantly improve the mass spectrometer's throughput without compromising resolution. In addition to manufacturing high-quality single slits, Mono Laser can also use femtosecond laser technology to accurately cut complex slit arrays according to customer needs.
With the surging demand for trace complex molecular analysis in the biomedical field, the research and development of mass spectrometers with higher resolution and sensitivity have become critical. Femtosecond lasers will play a key role in manufacturing miniaturized and integrated core components of mass spectrometers by virtue of their unique processing advantages, helping to achieve a qualitative leap.
