Revolutionizing ion mobility spectrometry: Rapid and cost-efficient manufacturing of drift tubes using additive manufacturing with coaxial filament

Abstract

Ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) is an analytical separation and detection method in which ions are accelerated by an electric field and separated based on their different ion mobilities. The manufacturing of these kinds of analytical devices takes an immersive amount of time and costs and is usually performed by hand. Additive manufacturing enables fast and easy fabrication of IMS devices from plastic. In recent works established drift time ion mobility spectrometers (DTIMS devices) were replicated using 3D printing technology by making use of functionalization through a conductive printing material. However, some electrical features such as the required resistance gradient were still set via conventional resistors. Therefore, new drift tube designs are presented with the intention of reducing the components and material used. For this purpose, three different drift tube types were fabricated, which were characterized and compared to a 3D printed drift tube with ring electrodes. Additionally, the analytical reproducibility was checked by comparing triplicates of the respective drift tube types. Cyclic olefine copolymer, which is particularly well suited for analytics due to its resistance to acids, alkalis and polar solvents, was used to manufacture the drift tubes. As a novel approach, a specially extruded coaxial filament is used, revolutionizing the manufacturing process of drift tubes in terms of effort, cost and time as the functionalization of the printed parts is already partly outsourced to the raw material.