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Developing automatic gain control for organic matter analyses by FTICR-MS


EMSL Project ID
60892

Abstract

Three commercial FTICR-MS instruments (Bruker; 7T, 12T, and 15T) routinely support organic matter (OM) analyses in EMSL. Generally speaking, the quality of data produced is inherently linked to the quality of empirical tuning. These instruments have over a dozen crucial parameters which may need to be manually evaluated on a sample-by-sample basis, and one of the most crucial parameters is the ion accumulation time (IAT). If IAT is set incorrectly: too few trapped ions result in low signal-to-noise, poor dynamic range, etc. and too many ions cause space charging effects and poor mass accuracy. In either case, the data is unusable, and samples need to be reanalyzed. Herein, we propose to design and implement a combined hardware and software approach to eliminate the need to tune the IAT. Through implementation of a form of automatic gain control (AGC) on FTICR-MS, real-time scaling of the IAT will occur making data acquisition more robust to sample variance. This proposal will directly benefit efforts for automation of FTICR-MS.

Project Details

Start Date
2023-10-01
End Date
N/A
Status
Active

Team

Principal Investigator

Kevin Zemaitis
Institution
Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory

Co-Investigator(s)

William Kew
Institution
Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory

Team Members

Venkata BS Garimella
Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Ljiljana Pasa-Tolic
Institution
Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory