Selected-ion flow-tube mass spectrometry

[2] It is a fast flow tube/ion swarm method to react positive or negative ions with atoms and molecules under truly thermalised conditions over a wide range of temperatures.

SIFT-MS was initially developed for use in human breath analysis, and has shown great promise as a non-invasive tool for physiological monitoring and disease diagnosis.

It has since shown potential for use across a wide variety of fields, particularly in the life sciences, such as agriculture and animal husbandry, environmental research and food technology.

The SIFT technique, which is the basis of SIFT-MS, was conceived and developed in the 1970s at the University of Birmingham, England, by Nigel Adams and David Smith.

The MIM mode, on the other hand will usually employ a much longer dwell time on each ion, and as a result, accurate quantification is possible to the parts per billion (ppb) level.

[1] SIFT-MS utilises an extremely soft ionisation process which greatly simplifies the resulting spectra and thereby facilitates the analysis of complex mixtures of gases, such as human breath.

Over recent years, advances in SIFT-MS technology have vastly increased the sensitivity of these devices such that the limits of detection now extend down to the single-digit-ppt level.