Michisato Toyoda

Miniaturized Mass Spectrometer in Analysis of Greenhouse Gases: The Performance and Possibilities

It is no doubt that mass spectrometry (MS) is widely applied to several research fields. In recent years, design and development of novel miniaturized mass spectrometers have been at the forefront of research in MS. A lot of miniaturized mass spectrometers are reported and commercialized from a lot of institutes and industries. The instruments have widespread applications, for example, detection and identification of chemical and biological hazards for the homeland security (Contreras et al., 2008; Smith et al., 2011), the food safety (Garcia-Reyes et al., 2009) and so on. Because of their small size and lightweight, miniaturized mass spectrometers have a potential for field use. These features are absolutely suitable for on-site environmental analyses, especially in greenhouse gases analyses. However, there are few reports on application of miniaturized mass spectrometers in this research field. This chapter describes instrumentation and application feasibility of miniaturized mass spectrometers to the greenhouse gases analysis. This chapter is consists of following four sections.

Development on Multi-Turn TOF-SIMS with a Femto-Second Laser for Post-Ionization: First Application of OPTIMA (Osaka PosT-Ionization MAss spectrometer) for Presolar SiCs

In the Earth and Planetary science, high-sensitive, high-spacial resolution and high-mass resolution mass spectrometer is indispensable. So far, Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometers (SIMSs), of which spacial resolution is 1~10 μm, have been used for isotopic measurement of individual minerals in the terrestrial/extraterrestrial rocks. However, it is known that secondary ion yield of SIMS is very low (less than 1 %) and that most of sputtered “neutral” atoms/molecules are wasted. To overcome this weakness of SIMSs, we designed and has developed the post-ionization system using high-intensity laser, which enables to ionized the neutrals after the sputtering (we call it, “post-ionization”). Here we report on our recent progresses of a development of multi-turned TOF-SIMS with a femto-second laser for post-ionization (OPTIMA: Osaka PosT-Ionization Mass spectrometer) and also report the first application for presolar SiC grains from Murchison meteorite.