Application of Microcalorimeter Energy Measurement to Biopolymer Mass Spectrometry

Published

March 1, 2001

Author(s)

B. Neuhauser, Gene C. Hilton, John M. Martinis

Abstract

We have performed electrospray ionization mass spectrometry of proteins, detecting the ions with a normal-insulator-superconductor microcalorimeter detector. We emphasize the measurement of ion-impact energy as a way to obtain extra information that is unavailable in normal MS. Energy measurements are used to discriminate against erroneous ion-strikes, to resolve ambiguities that connot be resolved by normal mass spectrometry, and to illustrate some of the performance limits of the current detector design. Energy resolution is the critical performance feature, and we discuss how it will be improved in future detector designs.

Citation

IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

Volume

11

Issue

1

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

ion energy, microcalorimeter, mixture analysis

Citation

Neuhauser, B. , Hilton, G. and Martinis, J. (2001), Application of Microcalorimeter Energy Measurement to Biopolymer Mass Spectrometry, IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=12200 (Accessed October 11, 2025)