Peaks of Interest- MIT Develops Tiny Gas Sensor
Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, are designing a tiny sensor that can detect minute quantities of hazardous gases more efficiently and quickly than current devices on the market.
Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, are designing a tiny sensor that can detect minute quantities of hazardous gases more efficiently and quickly than current devices on the market. The researchers, led by MIT professor Akintunde Ibitayo Akinwande, are utilizing the common technique of GC–MS and shrinking them to fit into a device the size of a computer mouse. Their detector, which researchers plan to have completed within two years, uses GC–MS to identify gas molecules by their telltale electronic signatures.
According to Akinwande, scaling down gas detectors makes them much easier to use in a real-world environment, where they could be dispersed in a building or outdoor area.
Current versions of portable GC–MS machines take about 15 min to produce results, use 10,000 joules of energy, and are about the size of a full paper grocery bag. This new smaller version consumes about 4 joules of energy and produces results in about 4 s.
Identifying and Rectifying the Misuse of Retention Indices in GC
December 10th 2024LCGC International spoke to Phil Marriott and Humberto Bizzo about a recent paper they published identifying the incorrect use of retention indices in gas chromatography and how this problem can be rectified in practice.
Investigating the Influence of Packaging on the Volatile Profile of Oats
December 10th 2024In the testing of six different oat brands, headspace sorptive extraction and comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC×GC–TOF-MS) reveal how various packaging types can affect and alter the oats’ volatile profile, underscoring the potential impact of packaging on food quality.
The Chromatographic Society 2025 Martin and Jubilee Award Winners
December 6th 2024The Chromatographic Society (ChromSoc) has announced the winners of the Martin Medal and the Silver Jubilee Medal for 2025. Professor Bogusław Buszewski of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland, has been awarded the prestigious Martin Medal, and the 2025 Silver Jubilee Medal has been awarded to Elia Psillakis of the Technical University of Crete in Greece.
The Benefits of DBS-GC–MS/MS in Barbiturate Detection
December 5th 2024Three analytical and two pre-treatment methods—gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS), gas chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (GC–MS/MS), and liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) plus liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) and dried blood spot (DBS) —were compared for the quantitation and characterization of barbiturates.
