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The wonderful world of ion mobility mass spectrometry: how is it revolutionizing the analysis of complex samples?
Ion mobility mass spectrometry (IMS-MS) is an advanced analytical chemistry technique that separates gas phase ions based on their interaction with a collision gas and their masses. The effectiveness of this technique in dealing with complex samples has made it highly regarded in fields such as proteomics and metabolomics. With the continuous advancement of technology, the development of IMS-MS can be traced back to the 1960s. With a series of innovations and improvements, this technology can achieve extremely high sensitivity and accuracy today.
The performance of IMS-MS makes it widely used in the analysis of complex samples, especially in the biomedical field, providing important data to support scientific research.
History
Earl W. McDaniel, one of the pioneers of ion mobility mass spectrometry, combined a low-field ion mobility drift cell with a mass spectrometer in the early 1960s, opening up this field. The first of its kind. Subsequently, a series of researchers, including Cohen and his team, introduced the combination of time-of-flight mass spectrometry and ion mobility mass spectrometry at Bell Labs in 1963. In the decades since then, these technologies have continued to evolve to meet the needs of analyzing a variety of samples.
The development of IMS-MS technology has further expanded the application scope of mass spectrometry, showing incomparable advantages, especially when the sample diversity is higher.
Instruments and techniques
The core components of an IMS-MS instrument are an ion mobility spectrometer and a mass spectrometer. The introduction of samples and the ionization process are the first steps in instrument operation. Different ionization techniques are used depending on the physical state of different substances. For example, gas phase samples are often used for radioionization and photoionization, while liquid phase samples are treated with techniques such as electrospray ionization.
Ion mobility separation
Ion mobility separation is the key technology of IMS-MS, and this process is similar to the movement of molecules in a fluid. One of the most common types is drift tube ion mobility spectrometry (DTIMS), which separates ions based on their drift time in a tube. The separation power of these instruments improves the accuracy of structural analysis and they are often used in conjunction with time-of-flight mass spectrometers (TOF).
Ion mobility mass spectrometry can not only analyze the membrane mechanics of compounds, but also obtain important structural information between molecules by comparing the collision cross section (CCS) of known samples.
Mass separation
Traditional IMS-MS instruments typically use a time-of-flight mass spectrometer for mass separation, which is widely used due to its fast data acquisition and good sensitivity. With the further development of the instrument, other types of mass spectrometers (such as quadrupole mass spectrometers and ion trap mass spectrometers) have also begun to be integrated with IMS to meet higher-level analysis needs.
Application Areas
The application scenarios of IMS-MS cover a large number of scientific research fields. Especially in the analysis of complex mixtures, the peak capacity of IMS-MS performs well. In the fields of biomedicine and chemical safety, IMS-MS technology can effectively detect chemical warfare agents, explosives and other hazardous substances, and has become an indispensable tool in protein and drug analysis.
The technological advances of IMS-MS have opened up new research horizons, especially in the detection and quantitative analysis of particles and size isomers, showing unparalleled advantages over traditional mass spectrometry technology.
In the face of increasingly complex scientific problems, the continuous innovation and application expansion of IMS-MS has not only sparked a revolution in laboratories, but also influenced multiple scientific research fields around the world. In this rapidly changing world, could IMS-MS become the future standard in analytical technology?
