spectroscopy & Chromatography

The Story

This series of papers came about beginning with an interest in exploring how interfacing a digital computer could transform the measurement process. It proceeded from a great increase in the amount and efficiency in spectroscopic instrumentation, but then became applied to GC/MS. This work introduced me to the practical aspects of chromatography in which I came to several realizations.

Perhaps the most significant, and still not appreciated, is that peak broadening in isocratic elution is not caused by band broadening on the column, but by the fact that the later peaks, moving more slowly, take longer to emerge from the column. It is still not appreciated that one can halt the elution process for a time without significantly increasing the peak width.

We were developing time-of-flight mass spectrometry as a detector for chromatography, appealed to by its capability of producing complete mass spectra thousands of times per second. This required integrating storage of every spectrum, the concept of which is shown in the illustration for this category. Coming to the last paper, through the use of single-ion chromatograms, we could increase the number of compounds effectively separated or decrease the time required to run the chromatogram. All these techniques are now in the standard repertoire.

Journal articles and Patents

The people who helped make these papers and patents possible are Peter Aiello, Lynn Jones, Carl Myerholtz, George Leroi, David Gelderloos, Kathy Rowlan, John Birks, James Avery, John Allison, J. Throck Watson, John Holland, John Wahl, Victoria McGuffin, Eric Erickson, Bruce Newcome, R, E, Tecklenberg, Michael Davenport, Richard McLane, and George Yefchak.

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Data Analysis
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The Triple Quadrupole (MS/MS)