New High-Resolution PTR-TOF 4000 Trace Gas Analyser Launched

The world’s smallest, commercial high-resolution PTR-TOF instrument for VOC monitoring

IONICON Analytik, the Austrian based leading manufacturer of real-time trace VOC analysers, introduces a new compact high-resolution instrument. For the first time IONICON combines highsensitivity with a high mass resolving power in a small and lightweight PTR-TOFMS.

The PTR-TOF 4000 has already been successfully deployed aboard NASA flying laboratories for air quality monitoring.

The development

In 2014, the PTR-TOF 1000 was launched, a new platform with the aim to create a compact and affordable PTR-TOFMS allowing customers from all over the world in various application areas to benefit from the advanced time-of-flight technology. In early 2016, IONICON developed the IONBOOSTER funnel to further increase the sensitivity of its PTR-TOFMS instruments up to 10-fold.

Inspired by these achievements and rewarded with immediate success in the market of more than 30 PTR-TOF 1000 systems sold since its introduction, the company took this concept one step further.

The new instrument
“We decided to create the ’no-compromise’ trace VOC analyser. A high-resolution PTR-TOFMS but being small, lightweight, extremely sensitive, robust and also very competitively priced”, IONICON CEO Lukas MÄRK explains the motivations.

These efforts lead to a new instrument: the IONICON PTR-TOF 4000 featuring the new ION-GUIDE hexapole technology and a novel high-resolution TOF. The results are an impressing mass resolution of up to 4000 m/Δm and a sensitivity of roughly of 200 cps/ppbv with a low detection limit of below 5 pptv.

The PTR-TOF 4000 complements IONICON’s PTR-TOFMS series ideally, being positioned in between the PTR-TOF 1000 system and the company’s current flagship instrument, the PTR-QiTOF.

Proven aboard NASA’s flying laboratories

Prototypes of the new PTR-TOF 4000 have been extensively tested in the field. A long-standing cooperation between the University of Innsbruck and IONICON made it possible to participate in airborne campaigns aboard NASA’s atmospheric research aircrafts for measuring air pollution in the atmosphere (e.g. KORUS-AQ). Lukas MÄRK comments on this mutually beneficial collaboration:

"It’s like going to space where instruments face their ultimate challenge. We were able to test the PTR-TOF 4000 prototypes under the most demanding conditions and could also benefit from the scientists’ experience when optimising the user experience of our novel trace VOC analysers.“

The PTR-TOF 4000 is now available. For more details, please contact IONICON.