High-Res Benchtop ESI-TOF

Courtesy of Bruker Daltonics

The life science mass spectrometry industry has experienced a boom recently with a spate of new instruments and technological advances. Billerica, Mass.-based Bruker Daltonics continues this trend with the new microTOF™ electrospray ionization-time-of-flight (ESI-TOF) mass spectrometer, introduced at the 2003 PittCon conference in Orlando, Fla.

The microTOF is a benchtop instrument that offers twice the resolution--10,000 FWHM (full width, half maximum) versus 5,000 FWHM--of its competitors despite its smaller size, says Victor Fursey, Bruker Daltonics' director of sales and marketing for North America. In addition, the system features better than 3 ppm mass accuracy with an internal standard. Fursey notes that while currently available benchtop ESI-TOF systems typically lack the mass accuracy for identification of unknown molecules, the microTOF's resolution makes it suitable for such applications. "We wanted to create a high-resolution bench-top instrument that could deliver on exact mass for molecular formula determination," Fursey explains....