Neutral particle mass spectrometry with nanomechanical systems
Abstract
Current approaches to mass spectrometry (MS) require ionization of the analytes of interest. For high-mass species, the resulting charge state distribution can be complex and difficult to interpret correctly. Here, using a setup comprising both conventional time-of-flight MS (TOF-MS) and nano-electromechanical systems-based MS (NEMS-MS) in situ, we show directly that NEMS-MS analysis is insensitive to charge state: the spectrum consists of a single peak whatever the species' charge state, making it significantly clearer than existing MS analysis. In subsequent tests, all the charged particles are electrostatically removed from the beam, and unlike TOF-MS, NEMS-MS can still measure masses. This demonstrates the possibility to measure mass spectra for neutral particles. Thus, it is possible to envisage MS-based studies of analytes that are incompatible with current ionization techniques and the way is now open for the development of cutting-edge system architectures with unique analytical capability.
Additional Information
© 2015 The Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. Received 09 January 2015. Accepted 02 February 2015. Published 10 March 2015. We acknowledge partial support from the LETI Carnot Institute NEMS-MS project. We also thank Carine Marcoux for her support with the device fabrication, A.-K. Stark for technical discussions as well as Professor Jean-Claude Tabet for his advice on the writing of the manuscript. S.H. would like to thank Professor Dan Frost for carefully proofreading the text.Attached Files
Published - ncomms7482.pdf
Submitted - 1405.7281.pdf
Supplemental Material - ncomms7482-s1.pdf
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC4366497
- Eprint ID
- 57219
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20150505-091144707
- LETI Carnot Institute
- Created
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2015-05-05Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field