US Patent 7586089 Feedback fragmentation in ion trap mass spectrometers

In an RF ion trap mass spectrometer, selected parent ions are fragmented by collisions or electrons and a spectrum of the ion fragments is measured. The measured fragment ion spectrum is then analyzed for the presence of a dominant ion species and, when a dominant ion species is present, selected parent ions are fragmented and a spectrum of the ion fragments is again measured, but with an additional collision excitation of the dominant ion species. The resulting daughter ion spectrum is qualitatively improved.