Magnet will be designed in conjunction with NHFML scientists.
Bruker Daltronics has been selected by the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL) at Florida State University to build the world’s first 21.0 tesla (T) Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance (FT-ICR) magnet. The contract for the magnet is valued at over $10 million, and delivery is planned for the first half of calendar year 2013.
The magnet will be designed in collaboration with NHFML scientists and used in the FT-ICR program at the lab. The 21.0 T design offers a 110 mm room temperature horizontal bore and includes design features reportedly pioneered by Bruker, including operation at a temperature of ~2 Kelvin by use of Bruker’s UltraStabilized cooling technology and the UltraShield technology, which reduces magnetic stray fields.
Bruker has already ordered the superconducting wire from its subsidiary, Bruker Energy & Supercon Technologies, to meet the delivery schedule of the NHMFL 21 T FT-ICR magnet project.
FT-ICR is the highest resolution mass spectrometer available and is useful in the analysis of extremely complex mixtures including petroleum, metabolites, and for the characterization of large biological molecules such as proteins. The performance of FT-ICR systems improves with increasing magnetic field. The highest field systems currently available operate at 15 T, so the 21.0 T system represents a dramatic improvement of 40% in mass resolution and more than 90% in mass accuracy over currently available systems.
“The delivery of the 21.0 T FT-ICR magnet from Bruker, together with instrumentation developments we have planned, will lead to revolutionary new capabilities in FT-ICR, by significantly extending current upper limits for macromolecular weight as well as chemical complexity,” says Alan Marshall, Ph.D., Robert O. Lawton professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Florida State University and director of the high field FT-ICR program at the NHMFL.
