A Very Wonderful Open Chemical Review On A Most Powerful Analytical Chemistry Tool: IMS/Mass Spec.

In recent years, near the end of my life, I've been overwhelmed with the power of mass spectrometry.

When I was a kid, I was an NMR kind of guy. I have nothing bad to say about NMR, but it can't match the speed and power of mass spectrometry.

In recent years, I've been an advocate for coupling ion mobility with mass spectrometry, and the manufacturers of these instruments are making more and more and more sophisticated instruments to do this.

For anyone interested in this topic who has a modicum of scientific training, I recommend this review, which is open sourced and available to the public without subscription: Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry (IM-MS) for Structural Biology: Insights Gained by Measuring Mass, Charge, and Collision Cross Section, Emilia Christofi and Perdita Barran, Chemical Reviews 2023 123 (6), 2902-2949.

It's only in the last decade that I became aware of ion mobility experiments, and I thought that the technique was kind of "new."

What I didn't realize, but learned from the article is that historically ion mobility experiments, like mass spectrometry itself, was first explored in the early 20th century, an outgrowth of the then new field, atomic physics, which came after the atomic nature of matter was first understood and finally, after some struggle, universally accepted.

It's a cool article, available electronically, and one does not need to read it all, but can just jump around to the sexy parts.

Have a happy holiday weekend.