Miniaturized Mass Spectrometer in Analysis of Greenhouse Gases: The Performance and Possibilities

It is no doubt that mass spectrometry (MS) is widely applied to several research fields. In recent years, design and development of novel miniaturized mass spectrometers have been at the forefront of research in MS. A lot of miniaturized mass spectrometers are reported and commercialized from a lot of institutes and industries. The instruments have widespread applications, for example, detection and identification of chemical and biological hazards for the homeland security (Contreras et al., 2008; Smith et al., 2011), the food safety (Garcia-Reyes et al., 2009) and so on. Because of their small size and lightweight, miniaturized mass spectrometers have a potential for field use. These features are absolutely suitable for on-site environmental analyses, especially in greenhouse gases analyses. However, there are few reports on application of miniaturized mass spectrometers in this research field. This chapter describes instrumentation and application feasibility of miniaturized mass spectrometers to the greenhouse gases analysis. This chapter is consists of following four sections.