Historical, Current and Future Developments of Traveling Wave Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry: A Personal Perspective
Abstract
Analytical ion mobility (IM) separation experiments and IM calculations were predominantly performed in the academic environment with drift-tube devices using helium as the neutral drift gas. The introduction of the travelling wave ion mobility (TWIM) separator changed this and
redefined the utility and, importantly, the availability of IM for the broader research base. The first commercial TWIM enabled quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer (Q-ToF) was introduced in 2006. Over the subsequent thirteen years of its evolution, a TWIM separator has
been placed inside six different MS systems (Synapt G1, G2, G2-S, G2-Si, Vion and the cyclicIM instruments). TWIM was originally and successfully applied to the area of native-MS analysis of protein complexes, and has now expanded rapidly into multiple “omics” applications, small drug-like molecules, monoclonal antibodies and polymers used in the pharmaceutical environment, fundamental gas-phase peptide structure determination and large MDa viral capsids.