After two rejections, multiple rounds of revision, and countless hours in the lab over the past several years, my paper on nanopore ion sources for mass spectrometry was finally published in Nature Communications! This paper contains the central results of my PhD research, which focused on the development of the nanopore ion source.
In this work, we demonstrate that nanoscale ion sources can emit biomolecular ions from aqueous solution directly into high vaccum, overcoming the primary source of sample loss in conventional electrospray ion sources. We also investigate the physics of the ion emission process, and conclude that ions are emitted by ion evaporation directly into vacuum. See my Research page for a more detailed summary of this work.
The reception to this work has been really great! I presented the work earlier this year at the annual ASMS conference, my first time presenting it to mass spectrometry experts, and was really pleased by the amount of positive feedback. Brown University recently put out a press release to announce the publication, which has been picked up by a number of news outlets like The Analytical Scientist, Phys.org, Technology Networks, AZO Life Sciences, and a few others.