MRI Track 1: Acquisition of an Ultra-Performance liquid chromatograph Orbitrap mass spectrometer for the Environmental Geochemistry Core Facility at Brown University

About This Grant

This proposal seeks funds to acquire a state-of-the-art liquid chromatography mass spectrometer at Brown University for research and educational purposes. The instrument will be housed in an open facility and available for researchers and students at Brown from many departments including but not limited to Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Chemistry, Engineering, and Biomedical science. The instrument provides new capabilities that allow improved and more efficient analyses of important environmental and biological compounds relevant to environmental pollution and engineering, human health, chemistry and biochemistry, and environmental and climate studies. It will be used for teaching advanced analytical chemistry courses to both graduate and undergraduate students. Students will be trained by faculty members and experienced technicians on the operation of the instrument and data interpretation. The instrument will promote new research ideas, enable new collaborations among faculty members from different departments, and allow new research directions that are currently not possible using the existing instruments at Brown. This proposal seeks funds to acquire a Vanquish Neo UPLC System coupled to a ThermoFisher Scientific Orbitrap Exploris 240 mass spectrometer (MS) with an Isotope Solutions package for abundance, structural, and isotopic measurements of organic and inorganic species in geological, chemical, biological, and environmental samples. Development of the high mass resolution Orbitrap MS (e.g., the Exploris 240) represents one of the most important technological advances in the field of analytical chemistry and geochemistry in recent years. By raising the mass resolution to 240,000 at m/z 200, the instrument provides accurate mass for resolving near-mass isobaric species from complex mixtures of small to medium sized molecules, greatly increasing sensitivity and linear dynamic range for quantitation and confidence for molecule identification. Selective ion monitoring with accurate mass provides exceptional selectivity of molecular species, which minimizes baseline fluctuations and lowers detection limits. This new technology is now rapidly replacing lower resolution mass spectrometers for analyzing complex environmental pollutants, organic geochemical biomarkers and various biochemical compounds in the era of “omics”. The proposed system also includes an Isotope Solutions package, allowing direct analysis of individual isotopologues of oxyanions (nitrate, sulfate, phosphate and acetate) and position, compound-specific and clumped isotopic analyses of organic compounds. The proposed instrument will strongly enhance research capabilities at Brown University and allow exploration of many new directions previously not possible using the existing instrumentation. The new system will promote interdisciplinary collaboration across multiple departments at Brown. It will greatly elevate teaching and training of the next generation scientists including postdocs, graduate, and undergraduate students. The instrument will be placed in an open core facility and will be available to all researchers on campus, nearby institutions, and visitors to Brown. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.