Micro-Channel-Plates fabricated by 3D-Nanoprinting for protein mass spectrometry

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One of the true technical marvels of the 20th century is the so-called micro-channel plate (MCP). This photon and particle detector, invented in 1957 by Russian physicists Khlebnikov and Melamid (Khlebnikov & Melamid, 1957), offers an amplification factor of 106 up to 107. Because of this tremendous gain MCPs have been used from early on in a wide range of detector applications. This includes low-level signal detection in particular important in astronomy and in electron microscopy, field emission for night vision goggles and for time-of-flight mass spectrometry, and any other application requiring incredible gain with high spatial and temporal resolution for imaging. While there have been a myriad of different configurations being described and patented over the last 60 years, the basic MCP features remained the same. That is going to change now with the advent of 3D-nanoprinting (3DN), which we intend to employ for fabricating novel MCP layouts with unprecedented imaging and enhanced amplification. The beauty of 3D-nanoprinted MCPs (in short 3DN-MCPs) is the adaptive quality, i.e. we will be able to redesign the complete structure and thus revolutionize the technique. Such a 3DN-MCP will impact a large number of scientific fields ranging from radiation and particle (i.e. electrons, neutrons, and proteins) detection over to mass spectrometry of proteins. In particular for detecting high-mass proteins relevant for virus and virus fragment detection such a novel 3DN-MCP is extremely useful. Hence, we deem the development of such a 3DN-MCPs as a novel device for mass spectrometry. If the outcome of our work is as successful as we believe it will be, we also foresee a potential industrial impact for high-throughput tracing of virus mutations.