Research Description:

Dr. Verbeck’s research interests focus on developing novel applications and portable instrumentation to make ion mobility (IM) coupled with ion trap or time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometry (MS) an effective tool in the elucidation of gas phase ion structure. By pushing the understanding and technological advances of ion mobility mass spectrometry, higher throughput instrumentation can be developed to reduce false positive that plague current field and forensic instrumentation. With a more comprehensive knowledge of ion mobility and ion structure, new experiments can be visualized to shape the future of IM-MS.

Miniaturized Mass Spectrometers for Field and First-Responder Applications:
Miniature mass spectrometry has recently become a growing area to produce handheld, field-portable instrumentation. Because of the difficulty to micromachine ion optical components with small aberrations, it is necessary to incorporate new doped silicon micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) methods. This technique allows for precise manufacturing of small mass spectrometry assemblies.

Dr. Verbeck and partners have created and tested ten new MEMS based ion optical assemblies. This list includes the Bradbury-Nielsen Gate, cylindrical ion trap, time-lag focusing TOF, reflectron optics, einzel lens, electron beam collimator, periodic focusing, and ion mobility. With the ability to utilize multiple substrates such as Pyrex, sapphire, and aluminum nitride, we can make ion lenses that can withstand an applied potential >2kV before breakdown. These devices have been created with <5um feature sizes and <250nm position accuracy. The angular alignment of the assembled structures is shown to be less than 1 degree.

Development of a high throughput – high resolution mass analyzer for bench analysis:
Over the past four decades, the understanding of gas phase ion chemistry has had tremendous growth. Since the late 1960’s, the drift tube has grown to be a useful technique in understanding ion-molecule collision phenomena and gas phase ion chemistry. Almost since its inception, drift tube experiments have had the ability to control the buffer gas temperature. Being able to control the temperature to study collision phenomena and probe reaction chemistry is vital and well understood today.