Infrared Photodissociation Spectroscopy of Water-Tagged Ions with a Widely Tunable Quantum Cascade Laser for Planetary Science Applications.

This work presents a benchtop method for collecting the room temperature gas phase infrared (IR) action spectra of protonated amino acids and their isomers. The adopted setup uses a minimally modified commercial electrospray ionization linear ion trap mass spectrometer (ESI-LIT-MS) coupled to a broadband continuous wave (cw) quantum cascade laser (QCL) source. This approach leverages messenger assisted action spectroscopic techniques using water-tagged molecular ions with complex formation, irradiation, and subsequent analysis, all taking place within a single linear ion trap stage.

Investigation of Venus Cloud Aerosol and Gas Composition Including Potential Biogenic Materials via an Aerosol-Sampling Instrument Package.

A lightweight, low-power instrument package to measure, both (1) the local gaseous environment and (2) the composition and microphysical properties of attendant venusian aerosols is presented. This Aerosol-Sampling Instrument Package (ASIP) would be used to explore cloud chemical and possibly biotic processes on future aerial missions such as multiweek balloon missions and on short-duration (<1 h) probes on Venus and potentially on other cloudy worlds such as Titan, the Ice Giants, and Saturn. A quadrupole ion-trap mass spectrometer (QITMS; Madzunkov and Nikolić, 25:1841-1852, 2014) fed alternately by (1) an aerosol separator that injects only aerosols into a vaporizer and mass spectrometer and (2) the pure aerosol-filtered atmosphere, achieves the compositional measurements.

Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometry: Applications for the Measurement of Nonvolatile Organics at Ocean Worlds.

A new technique that has applications for the detection of nonvolatile organics on Ocean Worlds has been developed. Here, liquid mixtures of fatty acids (FAs) and/or amino acids (AAs) are introduced directly into a miniature quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometer (QITMS) developed at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and analyzed. Two ionization methods, electron impact and chemical ionization (EI and CI, respectively), are compared and contrasted.

Computer Modeling of an Ion Trap Mass Analyzer, Part I: Low Pressure Regime.

We present the multi-particle simulation program suite Computational Ion Trap Analyzer (CITA) designed to calculate the ion trajectories within a Paul quadrupole ion trap developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). CITA uses an analytical expression of the electrodynamic field, employing up to six terms in multipole expansion and a modified velocity-Verlet method to numerically calculate ion trajectories. The computer code is multithreaded and designed to run on shared-memory architectures.

Accurate Xe isotope measurement using JPL ion trap.

We report an approach for the reproducible and accurate compositional analysis of different mixtures of Xe isotopes using miniature Jet Propulsion Laboratory Quadrupole Ion Trap (JPL-QIT). A major study objective was to validate the recent instrumental improvements to the long-term operational stability under different pressures, temperatures, and trapping conditions. We propose that the present device can be used in certification of trace amounts of isotopes in mixtures dominated by one or more isotopes.