MINIATURIZATION AND MASS SPECTROMETRY

'Miniaturization and Mass Spectrometry' focuses on one particular technique, mass spectrometry, whose popularity has increased dramatically in the last two decades with the increase in use of biological analysis and the development of two "soft" ionization techniques, ESI and MALDI. These enable the analysis of large but fragile biological molecules such as DNA, proteins and oligosaccharides. The book starts with an introduction to the coupling of microfluidics to mass spectrometry techniques. It then goes on demonstrate the advantages of such a coupling: the MS analysis benefits from improved sample preparation when performed on a chip while MS yields more information on the sample handled on the chip compared to conventional optical detection.