Project Grant 2136792

This National Science Foundation Project Grant of $255,261 awarded under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084) will fund the development of optimized extraction and projection optics for ion point sources. Steam Instruments Inc. will demonstrate technology advances in imaging mass spectrometry through this Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project. Specifically, the company aims to markedly improve mass resolving power to separate key mass interferences and introduce new position-sensitive ion detectors to dramatically improve data acquisition rates by 100 times and detection efficiency to 100%. These developments could enable a new generation of stigmatic-imaging time-of-flight mass spectrometry microscopes with significantly better performance. The project seeks to validate predictions about controlling beam divergence from ion sources through computer modeling and prototype ion optic testing. Work will be completed by February 2023 to support long-sought imaging time-of-flight measurements and new ion detector implementations.