Since 2018, the University of Wuppertal offers students a module teaching fundamental aspects of mass spectrometry. This two semester course is integrated into the regular curriculum of the chemistry master as part of the specialization in environmental chemistry. ipaMS has taken the lead and offers one lecture on "Ion Mobility and Mass Spectrometry" and one lecture on "Ion Generation and Ion Chemistry". In addition, students attend a lab course with several different instruments to work with in depth.
The key idea is to let students explore and understand the inner life of rocket like instrumentation by opening up the black box and holding essential components in their hands. The course is roughly structured - with some keywords describing the content - as follows:
(1) building kit – MS: fundamental principles of ion motion in the pressure regime of 1E-9 – 1E3 mbar with and without the influence of E/M fields; pressure reduction stages; MS inlets and maintenance of vacuum systems; fundamental working principles of all commercially available transfer stages and analyzers; tandem MS systems (MS/MS; MRM); ion detection systems and signal processing; comparison of the essential figures of merit for MS systems; sampling methods; data processing (in particular for highly complex mixtures)
(2) life of a molecule: fundamental concepts of matter, plasma and light; fundamental thermodynamics for the understanding of ion chemistry; gas kinetics, chemical kinetics and molecular reaction dynamics in the light of ion chemistry; fundamental concepts of primary ionization methods; fundamental concepts of sampling methods (gas, liquid, solid); ion transformation processes (chemical ionization as the run on the available charge in its thermodynamic and kinetic boundaries; cluster chemistry in different stages of a MS; impact of electrical gradients on the observed ion distribution; CID)
