High Performance Ion Mobility Spectrometry – An Ideal Field Analytical Instrument

Oral Presentation

Prepared by C. Wu, A. Midey, A. Graichen
Excellims Corporation, 20 Main Street, Acton, MA, 01720, United States


Contact Information: [email protected]; 978-264-1980


ABSTRACT

This presentation will review the recent development of ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) technologies and hyphenated IMS-MS and HPLC-IMS instrumentation, however, the focus of the presentation will be on discussing a high performance ion mobility spectrometer (HPIMS) as a standalone in-situ analytical system and the potential for using HPIMS in security/forensic, food safety, process monitoring and other applications where portability, speed, and high separation efficiency are required. In security / public safety applications, IMS has been well established as the instrument of choice for trace explosives and drug detection; however, the recent development of HPIMS which increases peak capacity can significantly reduce false alarm rates. In chemical and pharmaceutical applications, with the significant development of a commercial electrospray ionization (ESI) source, the HPIMS system can potentially replaces HPLC in many common manufacturing process monitoring applications, such as reaction monitoring, cleaning verification, and other analyses in pharmaceutical manufacturing and quality control processes. The presentation will also review the recent development of using ESI-HPIMS for on-site food and drug additive detection. We have demonstrated the potential of the HPIMS based on-site analysis method for detection of common banned food and drug additives, including phthalates, industrial dyes, steroids, antibiotics, etc. A standalone HPIMS system provides high resolution, sensitivity, and analysis speed with exceptional portability and low operational cost making it one of the instruments of choice for field analytical chemistry.