Instrumental Innovations

Chad Mirkin: There are many. One example from our group: we recently invented nanoparticle “megalibraries,” arrays of billions of nanoparticles with compositional and structural gradients. These libraries are analytical tools that allow scientists to engage in the high-throughput materials discovery. The growth of AI has been rapid and impressive. When we incorporate AI with megalibraries, we can analyze and interpret the massive amounts of data generated from them very efficiently. AI enhances our ability to identify patterns and predict material behaviors, significantly accelerating the pace of innovation.

Lloyd M. Smith: I think nanopore technologies are amazingly cool and interesting. They have already had a serious impact in the DNA sequencing space, and are poised to be important for proteoform analysis. 

Frances S. Ligler: The combination of and creative uses of cell phone optics and data transmission with deep learning methods for data analysis – and especially image analysis for multidimensional data – is truly phenomenal. Prescreening of x-rays and MRI images is already being accomplished using AI tools. The same approaches are being extended to cell cytometry and environmental analyses. The cell phone imaging combined with AI-based analytics will open new doors for providing rapid, on-site analytical information for food safety, precision agriculture, and environmental safety as well as medical diagnostics.

Ron Heeren: The amazing acceleration in spatial resolution in imaging MS.

Wim De Malsche: Vortex chromatography, a methodology allowing for dramatic reduction of chromatographic dispersion by inducing lateral flows. By just a power source of a few volts in AC mode to induce lateral flow in a chromatographic channel equipped with electrical contacts, dispersion (plate height) can be reduced up to a factor of five. This can be done in high end glass-type of devices, but also in cheap plastic – mass reproducible – columns.   

Alexander Makarov: I hope it is the Orbitrap Astral instrument, although I am clearly biased here…

Jeanne E. Pemberton: The  most exciting recent innovation in analytical instrumentation is the development of the various forms of vibrational microscopy and imaging with spatial resolution at the nanoscale (TERS, IR s-SNOM, PTIR, PiFM). These tools will revolutionize our molecular understanding of chemical, biological and materials systems.

Zheng Ouyang: Miniature mass spectrometry systems that can be used outside traditional analytical labs, by anybody, anywhere and anytime.

Martin Gilar: For me the most exciting recent improvement was the introduction of MaxPeak High Performance Surfaces (HPS) Technology. HPS is the modification of metal surfaces of LC hardware with hybrid-silica chemistry. It minimizes the interactions of analytes with metal-oxide surfaces in columns and LC hardware, which reduces the non-specific adsorption, peak tailing, and carryover for certain classes of analytes, such as acidic molecules, nucleic acids, and peptides. The improvements I observed with oligonucleotides were remarkable. We published our results in several papers, but the benefits of HPS technology are still not widely known to analysts around the world.