New Orleans, LA, (March 2, 2008) - IonSense, Inc. announced today the launch of its VapurTM interface for use with its DART® Ambient Ionization source on a wide variety of commercial LC/MS instruments. The Vapur interface (patent pending) is the commercial implementation of the company's gas ion separator technology (GIST) which is now available for use with LC/MS instruments from all of the major vendors. The Vapur interface improves the sensitivity and stability of ambient ionization by enabling more efficient collection of ions as they are desorbed from surfaces while also reducing the volume of DART gas.
Ambient desorption ionization, introduced at Pittcon 05 by Dr. Robert Cody of JEOL USA, utilizes metastable atoms to ionize molecules at atmospheric pressure of surfaces and from liquids. Initial designs for the DART source utilized an in-line alignment to commercial LC/MS Vapur was developed in order to collect ions that were essentially being desorbed in random directions from the target surface. The Vapur facilitates collection of ions along with the carrier gas containing those ions resulting in improved sensitivity and stability from the DART experiment.
The Vapur interface is positioned between the DART source and the standard API-inlet of the LC/MS. An additional benefit of the GIST is that it enables remote operation of DART source on robotic sampling systems such as the LEAP Technologies CTC Analytics HTS PAL and HTC PAL autosamplers. This relatively simple geometry has been implemented on a wide variety of commercial LC/MS instruments including LC/MS from JEOL, ThermoTM, AgilentTM, Applied Biosystems/MDS SCIEX, Bruker and Waters.
About IonSense, Inc. (www.ionsense.com)
IonSense, Inc. manufactures and develops direct analysis in real time (DART®) technology licensed from JEOL USA, Inc. The company manufactures DART sources and accessories for JEOL and provides those sources for end users of Thermo, Agilent, Applied Biosystem / MDS SCIEX, Bruker and Waters mass spectrometers. Sales of DART sources and AutoDARTTM sampling systems are provided by LEAP Technologies, Carrboro, NC.