Parallel Coupling of Ion Mobility Spectrometry and Ion Trap Mass Spectrometry for the Real-Time Alarm Triggering and Identification of Hazardous Chemical Leakages

Abstract

Hazardous chemical leakages involved in chemical terrorist attacks and chemical industrial accidents have been posing severe threats to human health and the environment. Vehicle-mounted mass spectrometry (MS) has been developed for continuous, on-road measurements to map the spatial and temporal distributions of hazardous chemicals. However, the detection of chemicals with small temporal scales and spatial scales is always challenging. In this study, a parallel coupling apparatus combining the techniques of ion mobility spectrometry and ion trap MS (p-IMS-ITMS) was developed to improve the detection rate and the time response capability of a stand-alone ITMS system for short time-span chemical tracking. A workflow was also proposed along with the apparatus, where the ITMS system can be triggered, as chemical suspects were discovered with the IMS system. The sampling positions of the ITMS system were investigated and optimized. In addition, a strategy was proposed to diminish the time span of samples from 1.5 to 0.5 s for evaluating the performances of the p-IMS-ITMS system. The detection rate of the stand-alone ITMS system was measured to be only 9.5, 32, and 87.5% for the time span of 0.5, 1, and 1.5 s, respectively. By comparison, the detection rates of the p-IMS-ITMS system were 99.5, 100, and 100%, where the detection rate was increased by a factor of 10 for 0.5 s time span. Moreover, the addition of an IMS system could provide temporal patterns of hazardous chemicals with a resolution of 33 ms. Finally, the potential of the p-IMS-ITMS system for environmental navigation monitoring and assessment was further demonstrated by detecting the leakages of dimethyl methyl phosphonate and dipropylene glycol monomethyl ether.

Miniature mass spectrometers and their potential for clinical point‐of‐care analysis

“…Although the IM resolution was relatively low, this exploration of IM in a miniature mass spectrometer paved a novel avenue to achieve high selectivity in analysis of complex mixture analysis using portable MS instruments. Afterwards, Haiyang Li and coworkers coupled IM spectrometry and ion trap MS for the real‐time alarm triggering and identification of hazardous chemical leakages (Li, Wang, et al, 2021). Evolved from the Mini series mass spectrometers, a novel handheld MS instrument, namely Mini 14 (Figure 2D), was recently presented in 2021 (Jiao et al, 2021), which had a weight of 12 kg and can operate on battery power for more than 3 h. Towards on‐site and POC analysis, the Mini 14 was designed to automatically adapt to complex conditions, correct the mass offsets, and extend the dynamic concentration range for in‐field analysis by employing machine learning.…”

Membrane-Based Pulsed Sampling Method for Extended Dynamic Range of Ion Mobility Spectrometry

“…Due to its compact size and fast analysis time, together with its high sensitivity and specificity, IMS represents a suitable tradeoff between simple sensors and laboratory-based instruments [17]. Recent research on IMS mostly focused on the improvement of the resolving power [18][19][20] and the limit of detection (LoD) [21][22][23], while leaving the dynamic range relatively less studied. Epping and Koch provided a summary of the typical dynamic range of commonly used VOC detection methods [1], in which IMS was concluded to work with low concentrations only ranging from 1 ppb to 1 ppm.…”

Molybdenum Carbide MXenes as Efficient Nanosensors toward Selected Chemical Warfare Agents

“…For the real-time sensing of the CWAs, current research emphasizes on the development of reversible sensing devices that are stable and highly sensitive to detect these CWAs at low concentrations, such as parts per billion (ppb) levels, with high selectivity both in air and water. In this regard, various sensitive techniques including ion mobility spectrometry, , proton transfer reaction, and Raman spectroscopy have been developed to identify different CWAs in air. However, the above-mentioned techniques are mostly delicate, stationary, and expensive equipment confined to sophisticated labs, with time-consuming sample preparation protocols for CWA detection .…”