Animation of the Aerodyne AMS. Credit: Matt Thyson (Lexington, Massachusetts)
Aerosol Mass Spectrometry Web Page
Animation of the Aerodyne AMS. Credit: Matt Thyson (Lexington, Massachusetts)
This page was created by Jose-Luis Jimenez. Email me at jose.jimenez@colorado.edu if you find any errors. This page is frozen to the state of the field in the mid-2000s, and it is kept online for historical reference. Due to the wide commercialization of Aerosol Mass Spec instruments and the limited number of groups developing new instruments (and limited time on my end), it did not make sense to try to keep track of all the details in this page.
This web page is a repository of information and links about real-time (& near real-time) Aerosol Mass Spectrometry ("Aerosol-MS"). "Aerosols" are defined here as particles suspended in air (or other gases), with size ranges between a few nanomenters (1 nm = 10-9 m) and tens of micrometers (1 um = 10-6 m). "Aerosol -MS" is the measurement in real-time of the aerosol composition using a mass spectrometer. Almost always the particle size is measured simultaneously with the composition.
The information is divided in two parts: a) General Information on all types of Aerosol Mass Spectrometry; and b) Information on the Aerodyne Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (AMS). There is comparatively more information on the Aerodyne AMS, basically because I know more about that system, since I have been, and still am, heavily involved in its development and use, so I have been able to compile more information about it.
If you have any information and/or link that you would like added to this page, including resources that may be useful to Aerosol-MS practitioners, please send me an email
If you want to learn about aerosol MS in general, you can look at:
This first table compiles the information on the groups with custom-built Type 1A Aerosol-MS instruments:
| Instrument | Principal Investigator | Department | Institution | Location | |
| PALMS | Dan Murphy| Division of Meteorological Chemistry |
NOAA ESRL Chemical Sciences Division |
Boulder, Colorado, USA |
| |
| Aerosol Time of Flight Mass Spectrometer (ATOFMS) | Kim Prather | Department of Chemistry | University of California at San Diego | San Diego, California, USA | |
| RSMS | Murray Johnston & Tony Wexler | Department of Chemistry & Department of Mechanical Engineering | University of Delaware & University of California, Davis | Delaware & California, USA | |
| Single Particle Mass Spectrometer | Jan Marijnissen | Particle Technology Group | Technical University of Delft | Delft, The Netherlands | |
| Single Particle Laser Ablation Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer (SPLAT-MS) | Dan Imre and Alla Zelenyuk | Atmospheric Chemistry Division | Brookhaven National Lab | Brookhaven, New York, USA | |
| Single Particle Laser Ablation Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer (SPLAT) | Stephan Borrmann | Cloud Physics and Chemistry | Max Plank Institute for Chemistry, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, & Research Center Juelich | Mainz, Germany | |
| Particle Blaster | Bill Reents | Bell Labs | Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA | ||
| Single Particle Mass Spectrometer | Tomas Baer & Roger Miller | Department of Chemistry | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA | |
| Single Particle Mass Spectrometer (SPMS) | Michael Zachariah | Department of Chemical Engineering | University of Minnesota | Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA | |
| Laser Ablation Mass Spectrometer (LAMS) | Greg Evans | Department of Chemical Engineering | University of Toronto | Toronto, Canada | |
| Single Particle Mass Spectrometer | Klaus-Peter Hinz and Bernhard Spengler | Institute for Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry | University of Giessen | Giessen, Germany | |
| Real-Time Mass Spectrometer | Peter Reilly | Chemical Sciences Division | Oak Ridge National Laboratory | Oak Ridge, Tennesee, USA | |
| Single Particle Mass Spectrometer | Rainer Vogt | Ford Forschungszentrum Aachen GmbH | Ford Motor Company | Aachen, Germany | |
| Single Particle Mass Spectrometer | Denis Phares | Department of Mechanical Engineering | Texas A&M University | College Station, Texas, USA | |
| Aerosol Mass Spectrometer | Joe Petrucci | Department of Chemistry | University of Vermont | Burlington, Vermont, USA | |
| Single Particle Analysis and Sizing System (SPASS) | Niels R. Jensen | Institute for Environment and Sustainability | European Commission, Joint Research Centre | Ispra, Italy |
The second table compiles the information on the users of the commercial Type 1A Aerosol-MS instrument (TSI 3800 ATOFMS).
| Instrument | Principal Investigator | Department | Institution | Location |
| (Research instrument on which the commercial version is based) Aerosol Time of Flight Mass Spectrometer (ATOFMS) | Kim Prather | Department of Chemistry | University of California at San Diego | San Diego, California, USA |
| TSI 3800 (Commercialized version of Kim Prather's ATOFMS) | Markus Galli | Particle Instrumentation Division | TSI, Inc. | St. Paul, Minnesota, USA |
| TSI 3800 | Deborah Gross | Department of Chemistry | Carleton College | Minnesotta |
| TSI 3800 | Eric Gard | Lawrence Livermore National Lab | Livermore, California, USA | |
| TSI 3800 | Peter McMurry | Department of Mechanical Engineering & Particle Technology Laboratory | University of Minnesotta | Minneapolis, Minnesotta, USA |
| TSI 3800 | Robert Donovan | Department of Chemistry | University of Edinburgh | Edinburgh, Scotland, UK |
| TSI 3800 | Prof. Michael Smith | Institute of Atmospheric Science | University of Leeds | Leeds, England, UK |
| TSI 3800-100 | Ulrike Lohmann | Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science | ETH-Zurich | Zurich, CH |
| TSI 3800 | Phil Hopke | Departments of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, and Center for Air Resources Engineering and Science (CARES) | Clarkson University | Postdam, NY, USA |
| TSI 3800 | Roy Harrison | Department of Geography, Earth, and Environmental Sciences | University of Birmingham | Birmingham, UK |
| TSI 3800 | Mitsuo Uematsu | Ocean Research Institute | University of Tokyo | Tokyo, Japan |
| TSI 3800 | Greg Evans | Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry | University of Toronto | Toronto, Canada |
| Instrument | Principal Investigator | Department | Institution | Location |
| Single Particle Mass Spectrometer | Tomas Baer & Roger Miller | Department of Chemistry | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | Chapel Hill, North Carolina |
| Instrument | Principal Investigator | Department | Institution | Location |
| Kim Prather | Department of Chemistry | University of California at San Diego | San Diego, California, USA | |
| Peter Reilly | Chemical Sciences Division | Oak Ridge National Laboratory | Oak Ridge, Tennesee, USA |
This first table compiles the information on custom-built Type 2A Aerosol-MS instruments:
| Instrument | Principal Investigator | Department | Institution | Location | Aerodyne AMS | Doug Worsnop & John Jayne | Center for Aerosol and Cloud Chemistry | Aerodyne Research | Billerica, Massachusetts, USA |
| Particle Beam Thermal Desorption Mass Spectrometer (PB-TDMS) | Paul Ziemann | Department of Environmental Sciences | University of California at Riverside | Riverside, California, USA |
| Aerosol Composition Mass Spectrometer (ACMS) | Jochen Schreiner & Konrad Mauersberger | Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics | Heidelberg, Germany |
The tables that compile the information on the users of the commercial Type 2A Aerosol-MS instrument has moved Here. There are three separate tables for the three versions of the instrument, with the newest instrument listed first. Some specific instruments have been upgraded, in which case I list them only once in their latest configuration. Again please let me know of any errors.
| Instrument | Principal Investigator | Department | Institution | Location | Atmospheric Pressure - Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (AP-CIMS) | Thorsten Hoffmann | Institute of Spectrochemistry and Applied Spectroscopy | Dortmund, Germany |
| Gas & Particle-Phase Selected-Ion Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (SI-CIMS) | Paul Wennberg | Dept. of Geological and Planetary Sciences | California Institute of Technology | Pasadena, California |
| Thermal Desorption Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (TDCIMS) | Jim Smith & Fred Eisele | Atmospheric Chemistry Division | National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) | Boulder, Colorado |
| Instrument | Principal Investigator | Department | Institution | Location |
| Single Particle Mass Spectrometer | Tomas Baer & Roger Miller | Department of Chemistry | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | Chapel Hill, North Carolina |
| Aerosol Mass Spectrometer | Geoffrey Smith | Department of Chemistry | University of Georgia | Athens, Georgia |
| VUV Aerosol Mass Spectrometer | Musa Ahmed | Chemical Dynamics Beam Line | Lawrence Berkeley National Lab | Berkeley, California |
| VUV Photoionization Aerosol Mass Spectrometer | Jinian Shu | Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences | Chinese Academy of Sciences | Beijing, China |
Many people ask me about the advantages and disadvantages of the two commercially available aerosol mass spectrometers: the Aerodyne AMS and the TSI 3800. The first question I ask is: what do you want to do with it? Although the instruments are conceptually similar, the data produced are very different, and in a general sense the instruments are complementary. One or the other may be best suited for a specific application.
The table below (taken from my 2002 AAAR Tutorial handouts) compares the main features & specifications. During the AAAR 2002 Conference, I asked representatives of both Aerodyne and TSI whether they disagreed with anything in the table, and no one suggested any changes at that time.
If you think the table is not accurate or complete, please email me. If I agree with you, I'll modify the table. If I don't, I can still post your comments here (as such).
This information has been moved to separate pages to make this page more readable:
