TECHNOLOGY
PEER-REVIEWED RESEARCH
Our upgrade kit is built on peer-reviewed science. Read the full published paper, or scroll through the summary below to see how SWIM encoding turns a standard QToF into a 2DMS instrument.
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PUBLISHED RESEARCH
Steven Wright, Nathan Cassidy, Alex Colburn & Peter B. O’Connor
Analytical Chemistry, 2026, 98 (17), 12883–12894
Read the full paper ↗
A 5-MINUTE SUMMARY — SCROLL TO READ
THE CHALLENGE
Most mass spectrometry workflows rely on chromatography to separate a mixture’s components before analysis, or on preprogrammed precursor lists that only capture ions you already expect. When components can’t be fully separated, the resulting spectra become chimeric — mixing fragments from multiple co-eluting molecules and making confident identification difficult.
THE INNOVATION: SWIM ON A QTOF
This paper reports the first demonstration of two-dimensional mass spectrometry (2DMS) on a quadrupole time-of-flight (QToF) analyzer — the accessible instrument class behind Q-2DMS. Until now, high-resolution 2DMS required specialist FTICR instruments. The team modified a QToF’s quadrupole to trap ions and apply Stored Waveform Ion radius Modulation (SWIM): a broadband excitation pulse that gives every trapped precursor ion its own signature modulation frequency before fragmentation begins.
HOW IT WORKS
Trapped precursor ions are excited so their orbital radius — and therefore their fragmentation efficiency — oscillates at a frequency tied to their mass-to-charge ratio. Every fragment ion inherits the same modulation frequency as its precursor, so a Fourier transform of hundreds of repeated trap-and-release cycles reveals exactly which fragments came from which precursor, even when every component in a mixture is fragmented at once.
PROVEN IN THE LAB
Using CID and UV photodissociation, the team simultaneously sequenced a four-peptide mixture — polymyxin, melittin, bacitracin and substance P — without any chromatographic separation. For polymyxin alone, all 10 peptide-bond cleavages were resolved and fragment masses matched to within 1.8 ppm RMS accuracy, while six other precursors were being sequenced in parallel from the same dataset.
WHY IT MATTERS
Because the QToF analyzer’s resolution and mass accuracy are preserved on both axes of the 2D spectrum, peaks can be assigned with confidence — without knowing the sample composition in advance. The authors note the same trapped-ion approach could extend beyond time-of-flight analysis to other mass analyzers, including the Orbitrap.
Wright, S., Cassidy, N., Colburn, A. & O’Connor, P. B. (2026). Analytical Chemistry, 98(17), 12883–12894.
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