This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
With this award from the Chemistry Research Instrumentation and Facilities: Multiuser program (CRIF:MU), Alec M. Wodtke from the University of California Santa Barbara will acquire a gas chromatograph time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometer (MS) for the Mass Spectrometry Facility of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. The high resolution instrument will have several ionization sources such as electron ionization (EI), chemical ionization (CI) and field desorption/field ionization (FI/FD) suitable for small molecule analysis. In addition to supporting researchers at this institution, cyber-enabling of the spectrometer will support remote data access for scientists and students in other campus departments and area institutions such as Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, Westmont College-Santa Barbara, Cal State University-Channel Islands, Cal State-Sacramento. The cyber infrastructure will also support educational and outreach initiatives via real-time remote instrument access in both college and high school chemistry courses. Research areas that will be impacted by this spectrometer include among others: the study of marine natural products with wound healing properties, total synthesis of natural products, optoelectric properties of organic materials, the development of new transition metal mediated chemical processes and environmentally sustainable chemical synthesis.
TOF-mass spectrometry with ionization capabilities is an excellent technique for obtaining accurate molecular weights on small and large molecules. Use of this type of mass spectrometer has become a standard technique, especially in studies involving labile organic and organometallic molecules. This research will have a significant impact in a number of areas, especially chemistry, biochemistry and materials. This instrument will be an integral part of teaching as well as research.
