The Clowers Research Group combines ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) and mass spectrometry (MS) with optical fragmentation mechanisms to probe complex chemical systems in the gas phase. These hybrid methods address a range of chemical problems spanning from the fundamental to the applied. A few of these research topics include carbohydrate structure determination, intelligent stereochemical ligand development, gas-phase clustering equilibria, and selective ion chemistry for threat detection. In addition to focusing on gas-phase ion behavior, students in the Clowers Research Group group hone skills related to sample ionization, instrument construction, experimental design and chemometric data analysis. These skills help deliver solutions to a range of chemical problems across domains including national security, environmental analysis, and bioanalytical chemistry.
Ultraviolet photodissociation (UVPD) has had its application directed primarily at biomolecule analysis, but with a common drawback of low fragment abundances. We encountered this same problem with UVPD of two sodiated isomeric glycans, but found a significantly higher fragment yield from the cobalt adducts of those same tetrasaccharides. An additional … Continue reading
Austen has recently assembled an animation demonstrating the effect of increasing drift tube length on resolving power, calculated from peak width contributions from diffusion and gate pulse width. Click the image to view.
Using a combination of Fourier transform ion mobility and ion trap mass spectrometry Kelsey demonstrated the degree to which different metal cations were able to enhance isomer separations across a set of tetrasaccharides. While full resolution was not achieved for the full set of 5 isomers this work demonstrates the current … Continue reading
Outside of an ionization source and a Faraday plate, a drift tube IMS system is fundamentally comprised of 5 primary components: Reaction/Drift Cell Ion Gate Gate Pulsing Electronics Current to Voltage Converter Data Acquisition System (DAQ) Within the IMS research community hardware and DAQ solutions are often custom and rarely … Continue reading
We are pleased to report the publication of our work outlining the effective coupling of a drift tube IMS system with an ion trap mass spectrometer. Compared to previous implementations (see our 2005 publication) we have dramatically improved the IMS duty cycle by encoding the mobility information in the frequency … Continue reading
In the Spring Semester of 2015, Dr. Clowers was recognized within the College of Arts and Sciences at Washington State University for Early Career Achievement. The College of Arts and Sciences celebrated achievements in teaching, research, and mentoring at its third annual Appreciation and Recognition Social on April 22, 2015. … Continue reading
For those that are interested, here is the spreadsheet used in the ASMS 2016 short course. Thank Dr. Bill Siems if you see him. Ion Mobility Cal v3
We are pleased to announce the unpacking and, more importantly, the successful pump down of the G2. Combined with a new UPLC unit we anticipate this instrument playing a large role in future metabolomics work in our laboratory. Kudos to Justin Chang from Waters for executing the pump down sequence … Continue reading
Unboxing to commence in t-minus 6 days and counting…
In early 2015 the research group is pleased to bring the next generation ion mobility-ion trap system online. This system is equipped with two ion gates which allows the speed of the IMS to be effectively coupled to the slow scan speeds of traditional ion trapping experiments. Though not … Continue reading
