Breath volatile biomarkers are capable of distinguishing patients with various cancers.However, high throughput analytical technology is a prerequisite to a large-cohort study intended to discover reliable breath biomarkers for cancer diagnosis. Singlephoton ionization (SPI) is a universal ionization technology, and SPI-mass spectrometry (SPI-MS) shows a remarkable advantage in the comprehensive detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), in particular, nonpolar compounds. In this study, we have introduced SPI-MS coupled with on-line thermal desorption (TD-SPI-MS) to demonstrate nontarget analysis of breath VOCs for gastric cancer patients. The breath fingerprints of the gastric cancer patients were significantly distinct from that of the control group. Acetone, isoprene, 1,3-dioxolan-2-one, phenol, meta-xylene,
A miniature
reflectron time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOF MS)
with orthogonal extraction coupled with electron impact (EI) ionization
source can be used to perform in situ gas composition analysis in
a planetary environment. However, performances such as the mass resolution,
sensitivity, limit of detection, mass range, and mass accuracy are
often decreased because of miniaturization. Herein, a compact instrument
for space applications has been developed, and its performance has
been evaluated. The mass of the TOF MS is 13.4 kg, with dimensions
of 300 mm × 200 mm × 200 mm, and the power consumption is
25 W. In this paper, the design of the ion source, mass analyzer,
and detector is discussed in detail. The upper limit of the mass range
is greater than 500 amu, and the best resolving power obtained so
far on the miniature TOF MS is around 405 at full width half maximum
(FWHM); other performance indexes of the instrument are also determined,
where the worst case for mass stability is 0.49%, together with a
mass accuracy of 0.12% and a sensitivity of 0.6 mV/ppm.
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