Proton Transfer Reactor Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (PTR-TOF-MS)
Kore PTR-TOF-MS instruments are now available in two standard forms:
The New 'Series 3c' Compact PTR-ToF-MS
A compact transportable chemical ionisation mass spectrometer for applications in industry and academia. Its small size and transport options
make it ideal for installing in a vehicle or frequent moves from one location to another.
The 'Series 2e' High Performance Kore PTR-TOF-MS
Configured in an upright rack with a large flight tube for highest
mass resolution, this instrument is designed with transportation in
mind. Thus it is equally at home in the lab or on field-campaigns. The
instrument is fully enclosed by panels, there are robust wheels and
lifting eyes are included.
Fast high sensitivity analysis of Volatile Organic Compounds
PTRMS is a soft ionisation method
utilising H3O+ ions to transfer protons to all
compounds with a higher proton affinity than water. General components
in air are not ionised by the hydronium beam, but most volatile organic
compounds (VOCs) are ionised by H3O+ with little
or no fragmentation. Other molecules such as hydrogen sulphide
(H2S), hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and ammonia (NH3)
can be detectable by this H3O+
PTRMS method.
Ionisation takes place in a low pressure reactor (0.1 to 2mbar) under
dilute conditions i.e. avoiding competition for charge between different
analyte molecules, as might happen with API sources. The result is very
high sensitivity combined with linearity and simple quantification. The
same hardware can also be used with other reagent ions if desired
O2+ and NO+ are common choices.
Kore has been developing affordable PTR-TOF-MS instruments for
research customers since 2002 when we designed the world's first
time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOF-MS) to couple to a proton transfer
reactor (PTR) for the Department of Chemistry at the University of York.
Subsequently the first PTR-TOF-MS instruments were installed at York and
Leicester Universities in the UK. Those instruments used the clients'
own PTR reactor with radioactive ion sources. After this, we at Kore
designed our own high current glow discharge ion source and we also
created our own novel proton transfer reactor. This allowed us to offer
complete PTR-TOF-MS instruments.
We continue today with our tradition of delivering high performance
instruments that are affordable for today's restricted budgets. We keep
our prices down by manufacturing in-house all the key components of our
TOFMS instruments including the Time-of-flight mass spectrometer and
time-to-digital converter electronics. An ongoing R&D program ensures
that instrument performance is constantly improving
These instruments offer the highly attractive features of a TOF-MS
linked to a PTR system: Real-time, high time resolution and high
sensitivity detection of all analyte species in parallel with the
additional advantage of allowing data to be retrospectively
analysed.
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Last updated: 13:45 03/06/2019
© Kore Technology Limited 2014