SBIR Phase I: Low cost, portable mass spectrometers based on a chip-scale ion trap mass analyzer

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目的更广泛影响是将质谱学用于化学检测和分析的能力极大地扩展到更广泛的用户基础。最终目标是生产一种足够负担得起的芯片级设备，使其能够成为超小型仪器中用户可更换的部件。这是由一种可微制造的离子陷阱几何结构实现的，该几何结构绕过了以前芯片级质量分析器的主要缺点。有可能将这项技术推向消费市场，在那里它可以告知家庭居民家中存在有害的痕量或无味化学物质。此外，随着数据科学的进步，拟议中的技术还可能能够向家庭居民通知可能指示疾病早期发作的挥发性有机化合物特征，其方式类似于狗，它具有嗅觉某些类型的癌症、帕金森氏症、糖尿病患者血糖水平飙升或下降的能力，最常见的是新冠肺炎，以及其他疾病。在进入消费市场之前，这些紧凑型仪器可用于国防、能源生产、制药研究、环境监测和太空探索等领域的重要现场分析。这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目将能够评估手持式质谱仪的紧凑型物理包装中的一种正在申请专利的新型离子陷阱质量分析器。质谱仪是化学分析的黄金标准，具有广泛的用途，但其昂贵的成本、体积、重量和功率阻碍了这些功能强大的仪器的广泛应用。目前的便携式仪器约为10万美元，大致相当于一个小手提箱大小，一次充电只能工作几个小时。作为这项工作的一部分，探索的新型离子陷阱质量分析器几何结构可以进行微型制造，潜在地将单位成本降低到可以将其整合到可更换墨盒的仪器物理包装中，从而消除了对专家维护的需要。结合现代计算方法、处理能力和云计算架构，这些质谱仪可以用于化学分析应用，对于这些应用而言，质谱学目前并不是一种经济高效的解决方案。这种无处不在、高特异性化学分析技术的梦想可以产生大量新的原始数据，为未来的集体研究和高级应用/解决方案提供信息和创造。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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 of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to greatly expand the power of mass spectrometry for chemical detection and analysis to a far broader user base. The ultimate goal is to produce a chip-scale device sufficiently affordable that it can be a user replaceable component in an ultra-compact instrument. This is enabled by a microfabricatable ion trap geometry that circumvents key shortcomings of previous chip-scale mass analyzer efforts. There is potential to bring this technology to the consumer market where it can inform household residents of harmful trace or odorless chemicals present in their homes. In addition, with advances in data science, the proposed technology might also be able to inform household residents of volatile organic compound signatures that may be indicative of the early onset of disease in a manner similar to dogs which have a demonstrated ability to smell certain types of cancer, Parkinson’s disease, spiking or dropping blood sugar levels in diabetics, and, most topically, CoVID-19, among other conditions. Prior to entry into the consumer market, these compact instruments can be leveraged for important in-situ analytics in fields such as defense, energy production, pharmaceutical research, environmental monitoring, and space exploration. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will enable the assessment of a novel, patent-pending ion trap mass analyzer in a compact physics package for handheld mass spectrometers. Mass spectrometers are the gold standard for chemical analysis and have wide ranging applications, however, widespread utilization of these powerful instruments is hindered by their high cost, size, weight, and power. Current portable instruments are ~$100k USD, roughly the size of a small suitcase, and operate for only a few hours on a single battery charge. The novel ion trap mass analyzer geometry explored as part of this work can be microfabricated, potentially lowering the cost per unit to the point where it can be incorporated in an instrument physics package that is a replaceable cartridge, thus eliminating the need for expert maintenance. Coupled with modern computational methods, processing power, and cloud computing architectures, these mass spectrometers could be utilized for chemical analysis applications for which mass spectrometry is currently not a cost-effective solution. This dream of ubiquitous, high specificity chemical analysis technology could generate massive amounts of new raw data informing and creating future collective research and advanced applications/solutions.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.