|
|
|
|
Faculty & Staff Students Facilities Course Webpages Off-Campus Study Research Department Activities Interested in Geology? Job Info Alumni Pages Useful Links Contact Info
|
| Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer | |||
|
Finnigan TraceMS and TraceGC
What it does: By combining gas chromatography with mass spectrometry this instrument has the ability to reliably identify even trace amounts of chemicals that compose a substance. How it works: A gas chromatograph uses a capillary column to separate a sample into its constituent compounds based on their retention time within the column. Each molecule's characteristic mass and shape control its speed within the chromatograph. As a sample moves through the column, some of the constituent molecules lag behind others and therefore, each molecule exits at a different time. Upon exiting, each molecule enters a mass spectrometer, which ionizes it and uses the charge to mass ratio of each ion to determine its identity. Whereas two different substances may have similar retention times or charge to mass ratios and therefore might be hard to distinguish using only one of these methods, it is unlikely that the two molecules would behave the same through both analyses. Because the GC mass spectrometer combines both techniques it greatly reduces the possibility of error in analyte identification. Instrument Statistics: Click here for a PDF of Finnigan's Trace MS Hardware Manual |
||
