Monday, September 10, 2012

Advion NanoMate


Last week I was introduced to the Advion NanoMate.  The NanoMate is a new type of ionization source.  Rather than using a single emitter, the NanoMate has a chip that can contain as many as 400 separate emitters worked into it.  I'm sure there are a number of uses for this device, but the lab I visited was using it primarily to maintain extremely high spray quality.  When the NanoMate detects that there is a problem with the emitter currently in use, the chip simply moves over to the next emitter.  This would be really useful if your samples are either extremely dirty, or extremely complex, and tend to rapidly foul emitters.

I don't know the limits of the NanoMate's compatibility, but it definitely compatible with the LTQ Orbitrap systems and the Q Exactive.  Although it does not run within Xcalibur, the two software packages were working together seemlessly on the two instruments that I observed.

The drawback of the device is that is considerably more expensive than any nanospray source I know of, and it doesn't appear at all trivial to operate due to the three dimensional aspects of moving a tiny emitter into and out of place all the time.  But if you are burning through hundreds of emitters, it might be worth looking into.  

No comments:

Post a Comment