The nanopore mass spectrometer

Joseph Bush , William Maulbetsch , Mathilde Lepoitevin (1) , Benjamin Wiener , Mirna Mihovilovic Skanata , Wooyoung Moon , Cole Pruitt , Derek Stein

1 IEM - Institut Européen des membranes

We report the design of a mass spectrometer featuring an ion source that delivers ions directly into high vacuum from liquid inside a capillary with a sub-micrometer-diameter tip. The surface tension of water and formamide is sufficient to maintain a stable interface with high vacuum at the tip, and the gas load from the interface is negligible, even during electrospray. These conditions lifted the usual requirement of a differentially pumped system. The absence of a background gas also opened up the possibility of designing ion optics to collect and focus ions in order to achieve high overall transmission and detection efficiencies. We describe the operation and performance of the instrument and present mass spectra from solutions of salt ions and DNA bases in formamide and salt ions in water. The spectra show singly charged solute ions clustered with a small number of solvent molecules.

Domaines: Physique [physics]; Chimie

Joseph Bush, William Maulbetsch, Mathilde Lepoitevin, Benjamin Wiener, Mirna Mihovilovic Skanata, et al.. The nanopore mass spectrometer. Review of Scientific Instruments, 2017, 88 (11), pp.113307. ⟨10.1063/1.4986043⟩. ⟨hal-02141254⟩