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| Figure
1
Comparison the 4.5" overall length TOF-MS built under
a NASA SBIR Phase I contract. The solid red line is the
theoretical performance and the black triangles represent
the measured mass resolution of the device built using
our technology. The difference arises primarily from the
data acquisition system used. Also plotted are the reported
mass resolutions from a full-sized instrument, a bench-top
instrument and several other miniature TOF mass spectrometers. |
Applications of Our Technology
The
small size and superior performance of our instrument is well-suited
to the trends in the current biotechnology market. These characteristics
are also well-suited to biological agent/pathogen screening
application and the integration of TOF-MS with automated sample
handling for diagnosis applications. A TOF-MS employing our
technology also does not need to be tuned for a particular
mass range, simplifying use of the device. The reduced size
and power requirements of our technology will also allow the
development of high performance portable devices.
Biotechnology:
Our
technology is extremely competitive with systems currently
on the market. It is smaller, cheaper and, depending on the
configuration and application, performs better than current
full-sized systems and also anticipates the current push by
the market leaders to develop desktop systems. Our technology
can also compete with FTMS systems for applications requireing
high-mass resolution, e.g. sequencing of complex mixtures
of proteins.
Hospitals/screening:
Generally, hospitals have big problems with very low-level
pathogens in their environment that present a significant
danger to patients and staff. Our technology is a low cost,
fast method to detect and locate these low level contaminations.
Hospitals/diagnosis:
Currently
mass spectrometry technology is not used in most non-teaching
hospitals because they do not run enough tests to justify
the cost of buying and operating the machines. However, diagnostics
are moving toward the use of "markers" based on
proteomics. The volume of these tests is projected to increase
dramatically, making the machines more necessary in labs in
larger non-teaching hospitals and possibly in large doctors'
offices.
Homeland
Security: Large
airports need to be able to test substances to determine whether
they are biological agents. Being able to test rapidly to
minimize down time is critical. With testing equipment such
as that being developed by Opti-MS, an airport can determine
what a substance is in a few hours rather than a few days.
The cost saving to the busiest airports is very easy to see.
There are many other applications involving homeland security,
e.g. detection of biological agents in the mass transit systems
of large cities.
NASA
Applications: NASA has a need for a miniature,
high-resolution, high-sensitivity (femtomolar) technique to
identify biologically important molecules for astrobiology
applications such as missions to Mars and Europa and for conducting
molecular biology experiments on the international space station.
An instrument built using our technology can meet the requirements
for mass range and sensitivity as well as requirements for
volume, mass and power: ~1 L, ~1 Kg, and <4 W, exclusive
of vacuum generation system, laser and data acquisition.
Links to Other Information about Our Technology
NASA
SBIR Phase I Proposal Abstract
Original
Universe Today Article
NASA
Astro Biology Magazine Version
RedNova
Version
Last
Modification 09/21/2005
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