STTR Phase I: Distance of Flight Mass Spectrometry for High Mass Ion Collection

The broader impact of this Small Business Technology Transfer Phase I project will be a new instrument to study agents causing human disease and damage to the environment. This technology enables better studies of viruses and large chemicals for public health and life sciences research. This new capability will also enable the study of interactions between proteins in the body, a critical aspect of many diseases. In addition, this new instrument can be used for continuous monitoring of drug and vaccine production to ensure high quality. The proposed STTR Phase I project focuses on the development of a new type of mass spectrometry, known as distance-of-flight mass spectrometry; and a new detector capable of detecting ultra-high molecular weight ions. Conventional mass spectrometry detectors depend on high-velocity collisions of the target ions on a small area of the detector, releasing an electron from the collision surface for subsequent amplification. Unfortunately, this strategy of ion detection fails for large ions. The proposed project will incorporate a new type of mass spectrometer that spatially distributes ions along an array of ion charge detectors according to their mass-to-charge ratio. The approach has no upper mass limit to the ions that can be separated, and thus is an optimum method to determine the mass of large ions. Further, by detecting the ion charge directly as opposed to the impact event, the new approach is able to detect massive ions. Having separate detectors arrayed by mass also enables collection of the ions after analysis. When the new detector is developed and incorporated into the mass spectrometer, the unique capabilities will be demonstrated by analyzing micelles under development as drug delivery vehicles. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.