First Commercial SLIM System in Europe now at BOKU

The first commercial Structures for Lossless Ion Manipulation (SLIM) instrument in Europe was recently installed at the Institute of Analytical Chemistry at BOKU. The collaboration between BOKU, MOBILion Systems Inc., and Agilent Technologies will allow this new analytical technology to be evaluated for the first time in Europe across diverse fields ranging from biotechnology to food and environmental studies.

Used in combination with high resolution mass spectrometry, SLIM is an ion mobility technology that provides a rapid separation of ions according to their size, shape and charge in the gas phase. In contrast to typical analytical methods where several minutes of separation prior to mass spectrometry are used, ion mobility separations are achieved in a fraction of the time ranging from milliseconds to seconds. This combination of two analytical technologies in a hybrid ion mobility-mass spectrometry instrument allows more meaningful analytical results to be achieved and new understanding of molecules and their properties to be realized.

Assoc.Prof. Tim Causon heads the Institute for Analytical Chemistry. “Working with this next generation ion mobility-mass spectrometer opens up new research opportunities in this area. The SLIM technology with its unique serpentine design provides a 13 m-long path length on a bench-top footprint and enables us to take a giant step forward in terms of analytical performance and the scientific questions we can address.”

The Institute for Analytical Chemistry at BOKU has been conducting research in the field of ion mobility-mass spectrometry since 2015. Stephan Hann, Professor of Analytical Chemistry and Head of the Department of Chemistry at BOKU, is very pleased about this scientific cooperation: “Access to new technologies in instrumental analysis is essential for research and cooperation with other scientific disciplines and brings a big benefit to BOKU.”