TY - JOUR

T1 - Ultra-Fast Ion Mobility Spectrometer for High-Throughput Chromatography

AU - Thoben, Christian

AU - Schlottmann, Florian

AU - Kobelt, Tim

AU - Nitschke, Alexander

AU - Gloeden, Gian Luca

AU - Naylor, Cameron N.

AU - Kirk, Ansgar T.

AU - Zimmermann, Stefan

N1 - Funding Information: This study is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) Project numbers 458829155 and SFB/TRR-298-SIIRI─Project-ID 426335750.

PY - 2023/11/21

Y1 - 2023/11/21

N2 - Fast chromatography systems especially developed for high sample throughput applications require sensitive detectors with a high repetition rate. These high throughput techniques, including various chip-based microfluidic designs, often benefit from detectors providing subsequent separation in another dimension, such as mass spectrometry or ion mobility spectrometry (IMS), giving additional information about the analytes or monitoring reaction kinetics. However, subsequent separation is required at a high repetition rate. Here, we therefore present an ultra-fast drift tube IMS operating at ambient pressure. Short drift times while maintaining high resolving power are reached by several key instrumental design features: short length of the drift tube, resistor network of the drift tube, tristate ion shutter, and improved data acquisition electronics. With these design improvements, even slow ions with a reduced mobility of just 0.94 cm2/(V s) have a drift time below 1.6 ms. Such short drift times allow for a significantly increased repetition rate of 600 Hz compared with previously reported values. To further reduce drift times and thus increase the repetition rate, helium can be used as the drift gas, which allows repetition rates of up to 2 kHz. Finally, these significant improvements enable IMS to be used as a detector following ultra-fast separation including chip-based chromatographic systems or droplet microfluidic applications requiring high repetition rates.

AB - Fast chromatography systems especially developed for high sample throughput applications require sensitive detectors with a high repetition rate. These high throughput techniques, including various chip-based microfluidic designs, often benefit from detectors providing subsequent separation in another dimension, such as mass spectrometry or ion mobility spectrometry (IMS), giving additional information about the analytes or monitoring reaction kinetics. However, subsequent separation is required at a high repetition rate. Here, we therefore present an ultra-fast drift tube IMS operating at ambient pressure. Short drift times while maintaining high resolving power are reached by several key instrumental design features: short length of the drift tube, resistor network of the drift tube, tristate ion shutter, and improved data acquisition electronics. With these design improvements, even slow ions with a reduced mobility of just 0.94 cm2/(V s) have a drift time below 1.6 ms. Such short drift times allow for a significantly increased repetition rate of 600 Hz compared with previously reported values. To further reduce drift times and thus increase the repetition rate, helium can be used as the drift gas, which allows repetition rates of up to 2 kHz. Finally, these significant improvements enable IMS to be used as a detector following ultra-fast separation including chip-based chromatographic systems or droplet microfluidic applications requiring high repetition rates.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85178329242&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1021/acs.analchem.3c03935

DO - 10.1021/acs.analchem.3c03935

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85178329242

VL - 95

SP - 17073

EP - 17081

JO - Analytical chemistry

JF - Analytical chemistry

SN - 0003-2700

IS - 46

ER -