Ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) is an analytical separation technique that separates ions based on their size and electrical charge. This information is helpful for determining the structure of an ion, and the technique is being increasingly employed in analytical laboratories. High resolution IMS is particularly useful since it can help differentiate between ions with extremely similar sizes and charges, such as those found in biological samples. Currently the highest resolution IMS systems were developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and are named structures for lossless ion manipulations (SLIM). SLIM have provided researchers with the ability to explore new insights into chemical composition and chemical behavior in biological systems. However, SLIM systems are constantly being improved to obtain ever higher IMS resolution. Essential to achieving high resolution in SLIM is the serpentine path that compact a long path length into a small footprint. To enable a serpentine path a U-turns are required to ensure ions change direction without losing the resolution. We observed a small loss in resolving power that gets worse as ions execute large number of U-turns. This invention disclosure discusses new geometric and operating modifications to SLIM to provide enhanced IMS resolutions over previously disclosed implementations. The specific new geometric modification includes incorporating long ion path lengths in SLIM while using a minimal number of turns. This is accomplished by making most of the SLIM path span the board lengthwise while incorporating a minimal number of turns along the width dimension. This produces SLIM path lengths identical to the SLIM path lengths obtained with previously disclosed SLIM implementations, which are different in that most of the SLIM path spans the board widthwise while incorporating a larger number of turns along the length dimension. However, this new geometric implementation uses fewer turns. Ion trajectory simulations have indicated that slight peak broadening occurs at each SLIM turn under conventional conditions, and so it is useful to minimize the number of turns in a SLIM to reduce any peak broadening that would cause reduced IMS resolution. To experimentally determine if reducing the number of turns gives higher IMS resolution, a new SLIM design was developed that employed approximately half the number of turns compared to conventional systems. Preliminary results indicate that this new system achieves approximately 1.5x higher resolution than the conventional systems, which is largely attributed to the reduced number of turns. In addition to the geometric modifications, it is possible to implement new electronic modifications to the turns to improve SLIM resolution. The new electronic modifications specifically include applying alternating current (AC) waveforms to the turns that possess different phases compared to previously disclosed implementations.