Origins in Development of the Ion Species Filtering at Ambient Conditions with Miniature Differential Mobility Spectrometry (DMS/FAIMS)

Differential mobility method (DMS/FAIMS) for separation of ion species at ambient conditions can be considered as a complimentary method to conventional Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS). Both methods provide ion separation at ambient pressure, but they exploit the different property of ion species:  IMS employs the absolute value of mobility; the DMS used ion species alpha parameter which is related to the dependence of coefficient mobility from electric field.  Both methods operate in diverse regimes and instrumentation designs. In IMS, ion species are separated according to their drift times.  In DMS, ions are separated according to their trajectories in the analytical channel with gas flow stream, and combined two electric fields (RF and DC) effected in transfer direction to the channel axis. 

DMS/FAIMS technology has been developed and refined over the past decade. DMS became a popular tool for detection and identification of the traces of chemicals at ambient conditions. Currently DMS analyzers are available for analysis of a variety of chemicals:  explosives, drugs, warfare agents, toxic and industrial components. Hybrid DMS techniques such as miniature GC-DMS, DMS-IMS, DMS-MS and ESI-DMS-MS are also available.

In this presentation I will review the history of development and testing of the miniature, planar DMS(s) which were started to create in Prof. Gary Eiceman’s research lab as early as 1998 and continuing today.  I will show the pictures and test result of the first standalone and tandem prototypes, which were build under Dr. Gary Eiceman’s conducting and then were used as a first production prototypes.