Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PROCOMM (Commercialisation of Proteus)
Reporting period: 2019-09-01 to 2021-02-28
We were successful in making the innovative functionality of our one-of-a-kind mass-spectrometer ‘Proteus’ (developed as part of the ERC ISONEB project), into a commercially available instrument. We were fortunate to coincide with a major project of our collaborators at Thermo Fisher Scientific (Bremen), who were re-designing their flag-ship Thermo Scientific™ Neptune™ multi-collector inductively coupled plasma mass-spectrometer (MC-ICPMS) into the next generation Thermo Scientific Neoma instrument. This provided us with an opportunity to translate the novel capabilities offered by Proteus into a device for the new MC-ICPMS. As a result of this development, the focus of the ProComm project changed from the original plan of trying to demonstrate the potential of a coupled mass-filter/collision cell MC-ICPMS in generating new analytical demand for biomedical applications to documenting its value for an existing geoscience and nuclear market. To this end, we chiefly worked on showcasing the capability of Proteus for in situ Rb-Sr dating and testing this against the performance of a new mass-filter/collision cell device to couple to the Thermo Scientific™ Neoma™. This work was key in Thermo Fisher Scientific’s decision to make a commercial coupled mass-filter/collision cell option on the Thermo Scientific Neoma (“Neoma MS/MS”).