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

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的广泛影响是将质谱法用于化学检测和分析的能力大大扩展到更广泛的用户群。最终目标是生产一种价格合理的芯片级设备，使其成为超紧凑仪器中用户可更换的组件。这是通过微可制造的离子阱几何结构实现的，它绕过了以前芯片规模质谱分析仪的主要缺点。这项技术有可能进入消费市场，它可以通知家庭居民家中存在的有害痕量或无味化学物质。此外，随着数据科学的进步，拟议的技术还可能能够告知家庭居民挥发性有机化合物的特征，这些特征可能表明疾病的早期发作，就像狗一样，狗有能力闻到某些类型的癌症、帕金森病、糖尿病患者血糖水平的上升或下降，以及最常见的CoVID-19等疾病。在进入消费市场之前，这些紧凑型仪器可以用于国防、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。这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目将能够评估一种新型的、正在申请专利的离子阱质量分析仪，该分析仪采用紧凑型物理封装，用于手持式质谱仪。质谱仪是化学分析的金标准，具有广泛的应用，然而，这些功能强大的仪器的广泛使用受到其高成本，体积，重量和功率的阻碍。目前的便携式仪器售价约为10万美元，大约是一个小手提箱的大小，一次电池充电只能运行几个小时。作为这项工作的一部分，探索的新型离子阱质量分析仪几何结构可以微制造，潜在地降低了单位成本，可以将其纳入仪器物理包（可更换的墨盒）中，从而消除了专家维护的需要。再加上现代计算方法、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，而质谱法目前还不是一个具有成本效益的解决方案。这种无处不在的、高特异性的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先进的应用/解决方案提供信息和创造。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 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.