A Faraday cup detector array (FCDA) and electronic multiplexing circuit have been developed for position sensitive ion beam detection. The entire FCDA always remains open to intercept the incident ion beam flux, and each cup is periodically and sequentially discharged through the electronic multiplexer. This produces true multichannel ion beam detection since none of the incident ion beam flux is lost, as is the case for scanning position sensitive detectors, and higher sensitivity detection is thus obtained. The FCDA consists of a one-dimensional or two-dimensional array of individual cups which are electrostatically isolated from each other by means of an intervening ground conductor, with resulting fill factors F of 58% to 85%. Each cup acts as a charge collector and integrator which is quickly discharged during the readout to create a time-multiplexed output signal that gives the position distribution of the ion beam. When N cups are sequentially scanned and read out, the ion collection efficiency is F( 1 -r/N), where r is the fraction of a clock cycle that is used for resetting the integrating capacitor. With a typical r = 0.2, a 64 element array thus provides an ion collection efficiency of better than 0.997F. The device measures absolute ion currents, and has a wide dynamic range from less than 1 pA to more than 100 nA with less than 70 dB of cross talk between cups. The integration of the electronic multiplexer with the FCDA allows the combined unit to operate within a vacuum chamber by means of only a six-pin feedthrough. The FDCA and electronic multiplexer have been used as a position sensitive ion detector in a compact mass spectrometer to produce better than 1 amu resolution over a 200 amu span with a sensitivity of less than 0.8 pA at a 10:1 signal-to-noise ratio.