Adventure in Chemistry at Warwick

The Chemistry Department at Warwick requests funds to support a 24-month programme to pump-prime an adventurous research proposal involving mass spectrometry and chemical physics, materials and interfaces and chemical biology. Existing ionisation techniques for the mass spectrometric analysis of labile molecules (electrospray, matrix-assisted lased desorptio/ionisation) depend on the presence of charge-accepthing features in the analyte. We aim to develop a carbon nanofibre-based ionisation device, which could allow field desorption/ionisation of a much wider range of compounds and, in particular, proteins, polymers and hydocarbons. The carbon nanofibres should afford high electric fields able to ionise by electron withdrawal ( field ionisation ) molecules with high ionisation potentials ; the availability of lower fields should promote ionisation by proton attachment.