Combining two techniques, analytical chemists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have become the first to detect fluorine and different isotopes of uranium in a single particle at the same time. Because ...
Analytical Chemistry
14 hours ago
0
29
Mission concepts to the outer solar system are relatively common, as planetary scientists are increasingly frustrated by our lack of knowledge of the farthest planets. Neptune, the farthest known planet, was last visited ...
Space Exploration
Sep 17, 2024
0
18
What do firefighting foam, non-stick cookware, water-repellent textiles and pesticides all have in common? They all contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS—human-made chemicals that don't break down naturally. ...
Bio & Medicine
Sep 13, 2024
0
18
Once again, the atmosphere amazes us with its diverse chemical processes. For the first time, researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) in Leipzig have demonstrated the existence of sulfurous ...
Analytical Chemistry
Sep 3, 2024
0
37
Organofluorine compounds—sometimes called "forever chemicals"—are increasingly turning up in our drinking water, oceans and even human blood, posing a potential threat to the environment and human health.
Analytical Chemistry
Aug 7, 2024
0
27
When a robotic rover lands on another world, scientists have a limited amount of time to collect data from the troves of explorable material, because of short mission durations and the length of time to complete complex experiments.
Space Exploration
Aug 5, 2024
0
2
Sweet flavors and healthy ingredients make strawberries one of the world's most popular berries. The complex biochemical compounds that determine the flavor and nutritional value of a strawberry—known as biomarkers—can ...
Biotechnology
Jul 4, 2024
0
0
A research team at the University of Pittsburgh led by Alexander Star, a chemistry professor in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, has developed a fentanyl sensor that is six orders of magnitude more sensitive ...
Bio & Medicine
May 2, 2024
0
90
Imagine being able to look inside a single cancer cell and see how it communicates with its neighbors. Scientists are celebrating a new technique that lets them study the fatty contents of cancer cells, one by one.
Biochemistry
Apr 23, 2024
0
85
Europa is one of the largest of more than 90 moons in orbit around the planet Jupiter. It is also one of the best places to look for alien life.
Astrobiology
Apr 6, 2024
1
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Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique for the determination of the elemental composition of a sample or molecule. It is also used for elucidating the chemical structures of molecules, such as peptides and other chemical compounds. The MS principle consists of ionizing chemical compounds to generate charged molecules or molecule fragments and measurement of their mass-to-charge ratios. In a typical MS procedure:
MS instruments consist of three modules: an ion source, which can convert gas phase sample molecules into ions (or, in the case of electrospray ionization, move ions that exist in solution into the gas phase); a mass analyzer, which sorts the ions by their masses by applying electromagnetic fields; and a detector, which measures the value of an indicator quantity and thus provides data for calculating the abundances of each ion present. The technique has both qualitative and quantitative uses. These include identifying unknown compounds, determining the isotopic composition of elements in a molecule, and determining the structure of a compound by observing its fragmentation. Other uses include quantifying the amount of a compound in a sample or studying the fundamentals of gas phase ion chemistry (the chemistry of ions and neutrals in a vacuum). MS is now in very common use in analytical laboratories that study physical, chemical, or biological properties of a great variety of compounds.
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