L. N. Gall, V. E. Kurochkin
Institute for Analytical Instrumentation RAS, Saint-Petersburg
Mass spectrometry is a multi-purpose
high-end analytical technique used to determine the composition and impurities
in any substance or raw material as required by modern process technologies.
Several instrumentation companies over the world produce a wide nomenclature
of mass spectrometers for industrial, environmental, medical and many other
applications. These instruments are quite perfect, versatile yet very expensive
and costly to serve. For a long time Russia was the world's leader in isotopic
mass spectrometry, made competitive mass spectrometers for elemental and
molecular analysis. In 1999 development of domestic mass spectrometers
in Russia was resumed. The Russian Federation Ministry of Atomic Energy
started the development of a series of special-purpose mass spectrometers
to be used in nuclear-fuel technology cycles. In 2000 the Ministry of Industry,
Science and Technologies of the Russian Federation set up a R&D project
"Development of a mobile quadrupole mass spectrometer—chromatograph (MS—GC)"
and in 2002 a R&D project "Time-of-flight mass spectrometer with an
orthogonal and electrospray ion source" to be combined with a liquid chromatograph.
The work under these projects is performed by two interbranch scientific
and technical collectives including
1. Institutions within the Ministry of Atomic
Energy of the Russian Federation, RAS and private firms (SPEKTRON-Analyt
Close JSC (St. Petersburg) and others).
2. Institute for Analytical Instrumentation RAS,
Moscow State University, ALFA Limited Company (St. Petersburg) and others.
The paper presents the program of further mass
spectrometry development in Russia.