Very first thoughts

For almost two years now, I have been carrying this project idea with me, but it always seemed too sophisticated to actually approach. The idea was to home build a DIY mass spectrometer!

By the time I first came up with that idea, no Youtuber had build one and there were no plans available on Google either. Even today - two years later - I could still only find one video on a DIY system, containing only few information. Back at that time, this was rather demotivating to me, because I could not imagine that no one ever tried before and I reasoned that there must be something else preventing hobbyists from tackling mass spectrometry (perhaps the costly complexity and the limited use of a MS to a private person...). So I quickly put down all plans until recently, when I stumbled across Ben Krasnows videos on his DIY scanning electron microscope (SEM)!

Ben managed to build a functioning SEM in his garage and that was a huge inspiration to me. I thought if a SEM is possible, a working MS should be too! This gave me the motivation to start this project (and this blog). For me it will mainly act as a way to organize my thoughts and possibly to reach out to other enthusiasts. So if you are reading this and later posts and also plan on something similar or have other input for me, please contact me through email or comment below!

The aim of this very first post is to give an introduction into the topic, so if you don't know what a MS is, here is a brief summary:

With a MS you can essentially find out the mass of a given (and ionized!) sample molecule, called the analyte. The spectrometer (btw NOT spectroskope!!) does this by "sorting" sample molecules by their mass to charge ratio m/z. And when you have the m/z ratio of the analyte you can in most cases calculate the real mass of the molecule since a molecules charge is always a multiple of the electron charge e. What the MS gives you then is a mass-spectrum of your sample (m/z vs. signal intensity) and that allows for crucial statements about your sample composition. MS is now very widely used, from basic chemical research to medical applications in hospitals and even to bioanalytics like protein sequencing.

The very basic block-diagram of a MS apparatus always looks the same: You will find an ion source, where the sample ions are generated, a mass analyzer that separates ions of different m/z in a controllable way, and last an ion detector that gives out a readable signal when ions of any kind hit it. It is important to note that at least the last two steps happen under ultra high vacuum. There are different designs for all three blocks of the diagram available and not every design fits every possible application. Every design has specific advantages and disadvantages for a defined task.

So if a company or research facility plans on buying a MS, the first step is always the clear definition of the task that the MS is needed for! The apparatus is then carefully selected for that task and since these devices are so extremely expensive (rarely less than 100.000 €/$) there are beefy books available on that topic.

For me however, the problem is a bit different. I do not have a specific task for a MS, but i don't want to build a MS that is just a proof of concept either, and has no possible application. So the goal for me was to find the simplest MS possible with a real-life application. After reading through literature and thinking about it for quite a wile now, a came up with the idea of building a so called ESI-Quad, capable of analyzing biomolecules like proteins and fatty acids.

I opted for the ESI-Quad, because it is a widely used combination in bioanalytics with a lot of available literature. It also has several construction advantages for DIY. Namely that it works completely without a magnetic field, has no moving parts and an overall simple layout, and only needs a small effective ion-path-lengths under ultra high vacuum. This allows for a relatively poor vacuum in the main chamber, wich will cut on costs and makes a success more likely... (but I am still talking about ultra high vacuum of course). The compactness of the design also cuts on material costs.

In my next post, I will characterize the ESI-Quad system and hopefully come up with a specification sheet for its construction.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to share any ideas on this project with me in the comments or through email (marcotobias at gmx dot net).

Marco