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: Instrument Development (CRIF:ID) program, Friso van Amerom and Timothy Short of Stanford Research Institute, St. Petersburg, FL and colleagues Shekhar Bhansali, Teresa M. Greely and Jing Wang of the University of South Florida will develop high-density cylindrical ion-trap array mass spectrometers using micro-fabrication techniques. The devices will have lower system power and vacuum requirements, compared to more traditional mass spectrometer designs. The mass spectrometers will be used to analyze environmental water samples. Graduate students at University of South Florida will participate in the development of the instrument as well as working with teenage girls in a summer-time Oceanography Camp for Girls.
New kinds of mass spectrometry techniques open up brand new avenues of research. The instrument developed with this award will allow scientists to study complex chemical samples, in-situ, with field-deployable instruments. Increasingly, mass spectrometry has enabled rapid advances in a number of areas with significant societal impact -- including homeland defense and environmental monitoring. Technology like that developed in the present award will aid in future advances in these and other areas.
