Have you ever imagined how molecules can be weighed, which are even too tiny to be actually seen?
The most accurate way to characterise such a substance is to determine it’s molecular weight. In the lab various different methods are employed to do this: one of them being the MALDI-TOF-MS technique.
MALDI-TOF-MS stands for Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization-Time Of Flight Mass Spectroscopy.
Sounds complicated you think…?😵 The principle is actually quite simple: The substance together with a matrix gets deposited on a metal plate and is put into a vacuum environment. Then the area to be measured is pulsed with a laser which evaporates the sample. Like this, the molecules become ionised, which allows us to accelerate their flight through an electrostatic field. Here different molecules behave differently: heavy ions are slower than light ions. By measuring how long their time of flight was, you are able to compare the respective masses with each other.
Dead easy, right?😉
Have a nice Thursday! 👋🏽
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