page_title: Analytical chemistry
section_title: Mass spectrometry
hierarchical_section_title: Analytical chemistry / Instrumental methods / Mass spectrometry
caption_attribution_description: English: Accelerator mass spectrometer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory "The 1 MV accelerator mass spectrometer was (see photo) developed partially under the Resource funding. 14C and tritium analyses of biomedical samples submitted by Resource users are conducted using this 1 MV system. The AMS spectrometer consists of a cesium sputter source, low-energy injection beam line, the high voltage collision cell (accelerator), a high-energy mass spectrometer and a particle detector for energy measurements (proceeding clockwise from lower left in the photograph)."
context_page_description: Analytical chemistry studies and uses instruments and methods used to separate, identify, and quantify matter. In practice, separation, identification or quantification may constitute the entire analysis or be combined with another method. Separation isolates analytes. Qualitative analysis identifies analytes, while quantitative analysis determines the numerical amount or concentration.
  Analytical chemistry consists of classical, wet chemical methods and modern, instrumental methods. Classical qualitative methods use separations such as precipitation, extraction, and distillation. Identification may be based on differences in color, odor, melting point, boiling point, radioactivity or reactivity. Classical quantitative analysis uses mass or volume changes to quantify amount. Instrumental methods may be used to separate samples using chromatography, electrophoresis or field flow fractionation. Then qualitative and quantitative analysis can be performed, often with the same instrument and may use light interaction, heat interaction, electric fields or magnetic fields. Often the same instrument can separate, identify and quantify an analyte.
context_section_description: Mass spectrometry measures mass-to-charge ratio of molecules using electric and magnetic fields. There are several ionization methods: electron impact, chemical ionization, electrospray, fast atom bombardment, matrix assisted laser desorption ionization, and others. Also, mass spectrometry is categorized by approaches of mass analyzers: magnetic-sector, quadrupole mass analyzer, quadrupole ion trap, time-of-flight, Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance, and so on.
caption: An accelerator mass spectrometer used for radiocarbon dating and other analysis
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