Integrated Automated Pre-concentrator Inlet for Mass Spectrometer

This proposal describes a project to develop a pre-concentrator inlet system for a mass spectrometer. The pre-concentrator utilizes a heated mesh design that is coated with a variety of sorbent materials to provide high pre-concentration with adversely affecting the analysis time. An innovative method of evacuating the pre-concentrator chamber provides an additional gain in pre-concentration of 2 to 3 orders of magnitude. In short, the device will provide a pre-concentration gain of 10e3 to 10e6 with an analysis time of less than 30 seconds and requires less than 10W of power (average). In addition to proving the high concentration gain for a list of chemicals of interest, the project will also ensure that the measurement of chemicals of interest to the CBD program (e.g., CWAs and TICs) is also enhanced. The device will be designed such that the effects of temperature, humidity, and background contaminants are minimized. The proposed project will build on the success of the offerors Phase I SBIR effort to transition the proof-of-principle from a laboratory demonstrator to a fully characterized sub-component that can be integrated with a wide variety of chemical detection instruments.