Project 11 (EMPA)

Title: GD-TOFMS for the analysis of macromolecular materials [1]

Researcher:  Peter Horvath (ER)

Coordinator: EMPA, Laboratory for micro-mechanics and nano-structures
Responsible scientist: Johann Michler

Other partner: STE, DEG, CRI-SPSU

State of the Art:

With glow discharge techniques it is possible to measure almost all different kinds of solid materials. But one very large group of material is missing: materials with a macromolecular structure in particular synthetic materials and Bio materials. The typical GD process with a hard ionisation effect will always destroy the molecular chains leading to a loss of molecular and structural information. The use of fast time-of-flight mass spectrometry is a powerful tool to investigate plasma processes and the destruction of long molecular chains. There is only one measurements reported in the literature showing a molecular chain with a mass of up to 200 Dalton for Teflon (PTFE) and so far no results are published for Bio molecules.

Objective and Innovation:

To study the measurement of macro molecular materials like synthetic materials and bio molecules. Study the effect of hard and soft ionisation processes on long molecular chains in the pulsed GD plasma. The ionisation process in the plasma can be controlled by pulsing the RF-radiation used to feed the GD plasma as well as by the Ar gas pressure and RF-power. Modification of the standard GD ion source and maybe of the interface between the ion source and the ion detector are indispensable. To study the possibility to monitor some plasma processes in particular the change from hard to soft ionisation with a recently developed very fast TOF. The objective of these studies is to develop new methods and techniques to detect and analyse macro molecular materials from polyamides up to Bio molecules.

rf-gd-tof spectrum using "pure" copper sample