PFI-TT: Molecular Identification of Chemical Substances with a Multi-stage Analyzer

这一PFI项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力在于，它增强了人类了解空气中蒸汽和其他可能含有某些毒性或危险物质的物质的化学成分的能力。对称为离子迁移率光谱法的化学测量方法的原理和实践进行了改进，该方法已经为商业航空的爆炸物探测和监测化学战剂的军事准备提供了安全保障。该项目的创新将通过从物质中提取额外的知识来提高检测化学物质的信心，从而推动测量技术的发展。当这种分析仪被用于安全、医疗和消费应用时，这种改进将使需要高速、便携式化学分析仪的专家和社会广泛受益。技术的革新需要发现和发展物质在强电场中作为气体离子的行为。对这些行为的理解应该会对化学测量科学和其他物理科学产生影响，而不仅仅是这种特殊的技术。提出的项目解决了现有的基于离子迁移率光谱的化学分析仪的一个关键限制，该分析仪只能进行高选择性检测，无法提供准确的物质化学鉴定。本项目的目的是在小型平面离子迁移率光谱实施例中，使用从物质中提取的气体离子的顺序多阶段处理来实现物质的化学鉴定。在这些结构中，化学类特定碎片在环境压力下的空气强电场中产生，这是一个很大程度上未被探索的话题。这个项目将通过技术改进和对基本过程的描述来探索和成熟这个主题。随着这项技术的成熟，应该产生一种示范分析仪，可以对某些具体应用的性能进行评估，并对商业化途径进行评估。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this PFI project arises with enhanced capability for humans to know the chemical composition of airborne vapors and other materials which may contain substances of some toxicity or danger. Enhancements are made on principles and practices of a method for chemical measurements known as ion mobility spectrometry which already provides security in commercial aviation with explosives detection and in military preparedness for monitoring chemical warfare agents. Innovations in this project will advance measurement technology by increasing confidence in detecting chemicals by extracting additional knowledge from the substances. Such improvements will benefit specialists needing high speed, portable chemical analyzers and society broadly when such analyzers are employed in security, medical, and consumer applications. The innovations in technology necessitate discovery and development on the behavior of substances as gas ions in strong electric fields. Understandings of these behaviors should have impacts in chemical measurements science and other physical sciences beyond this particular technology.The proposed project solves a key limitation in existing chemical analyzers based on ion mobility spectrometry which are capable only of highly selective detection and are unable to provide accurate chemical identification of substances. The objective in this project is to enable chemical identification of substances using sequential multi stage processing of gas ions derived from a substance in small planar embodiments of ion mobility spectrometry. In these structures, chemical class specific fragments are generated in strong electric fields in air at ambient pressure, a topic which is largely unexplored. This project will explore and mature this topic with technology refinement and descriptions of fundamental processes. The maturation of this technology should lead to a demonstrator analyzer which permits evaluations of performance for some specific applications and the assessment of a pathway to commercialization.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.