Sniffing with mass spectrometry

Miao-Miao Chen; Hai-Feng Su; Ying Xie; Li-Fang He; Shui-Chao Lin; Mei-Lin Zhang; Cheng Wang; Su-Yuan Xie; Rong-Bin Huang; Lan-Sun Zheng

doi:10.1016/j.scib.2018.06.020

Sniffing with mass spectrometry

Sci Bull (Beijing). 2018 Oct 30;63(20):1351-1357. doi: 10.1016/j.scib.2018.06.020. Epub 2018 Jul 5.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory for Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, Department of Chemistry, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China.
² School of Information Science and Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China.
³ State Key Laboratory for Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, Department of Chemistry, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China. Electronic address: syxie@xmu.edu.cn.

PMID: 36658906
DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2018.06.020

Abstract

Gaseous compounds are usually on-line detectable on sensors. The limitations of conventional sensors are suffering from incapability for exactly identifying multiple components as well as incompatibility to possible toxicants in every odor sample. Herein, we discuss an inlet modification to the laboratory standard mass spectrometer, inspired by the sensitive olfactory systems of animals, for direct sniffing, established by connecting a mini pump to the nebulizer gas tubing. The modified mass spectrometry method-sniffing-mass spectrometry (sniffing-MS)-can acquire detailed fingerprint spectra of mixed odors and shows high tolerance to toxicants. Furthermore, the method has a low limit of detection in the order of parts per trillion and is a 'sampling-free' technique for analyzing various gaseous compounds simultaneously, thus offering versatility for smelling daily commodities, tracking diffusion, and locating position of odors. Sniffing-MS can mimic or even surpass the olfaction of animals and is applicable for analyzing gaseous/volatile compounds, especially those polar compounds, in a simple manner depending on the intrinsic molecular mass-to-charge ratio.

Keywords: Ambient mass spectrometry; Gas source locating; Olfaction; On-line monitoring; Volatile compounds.