The Daily Bulletin Archive

Please join the Chemistry and Physics departments for the seminar "Improved Instrument Robustness via a Hot Surface Induced Desolvation (HSID) Interface for Tandem Mass Spectrometry Instrumentation: Fundamentals and Applications," presented by Frank A. Kero, Ph.D., field application scientist for PerkinElmer, on Thursday, March 7, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in Science and Mathematics Complex 173.

The emergence of liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) as a gold standard analytical platform for quantitative method development in high throughput toxicology, environmental surveillance and food safety laboratories has been well documented. Recent trends in practical considerations for improvements towards laboratory implementation focus on reduced downtime to facilitate testing methods for large sample populations. This presentation will report on related strategies with a special focus on a dual spray ionization apparatus equipped with a heated coaxial flow ion source. The result yields a path for ion introduction into the orifice of the mass spectrometer using multi-orthogonal channels and laminar flow sampling. The advantages for this platform include high sensitivity due to an inherent reduction in chemical background (i.e., S/N, reduced N). Instrument ruggedness and stability are also improved due to orthogonal sampling and laminar flow. The laminar flow phenomenon is achieved by a combination of the influences of gas flow dynamics and electric fields. Ions are orthogonally extracted at atmospheric pressure and focused through a series of channels and turns entrained in a hot laminar flow of gas (different than traditional mass spectrometry instrumentation). Efficient desolvation is accomplished as a result of sequential energy transfer events. The flow of gas evolves through multiple transitions beginning with supersonic transitioning to shock cascading to turbulent and decreasing to laminar flow. The reduction in the speed of ion transmission is important to maintaining the sensitivity advantages of this interface. Applications will demonstrate improved performance for residue analysis (pesticides in cannabis and wine, antibiotics, vet med drugs) in food and selected targeted applications in biological matrices with a focus on forensic toxicology.

Dr. Kero is a field application scientist for PerkinElmer who has covered the Midwest, West, Northeast, and Canadian territories. He holds a B.S in chemistry from Seton Hall University and a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from the University of Florida. He was awarded an ORISE research fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he completed work in support of NHANES and additional research evaluating the utility of animal sentinels for utility in exposure assessment of thyroid inhibitors in environmental surface waters. He has almost 20 years of analytical method development experience. His R&D product development measurable include three investigational new drug (IND) 505B2 FDA submissions; three new invention disclosures; roughly 16 peer-reviewed publications (journals and encyclopedias), 96 conference posters, 20 vendor application notes, and more than 4,000 reads on Researchgate.net.