Patrick Sears

TL;DR: The catalytic reduction of NO has been studied over novel supported uranium oxide catalysts which exhibit comparable activity and selectivity to that of conventional supported Pt catalysts and for which in situ XRD identifies the active phase to be UOx (2 < x < 2.25) as discussed by the authors.

Abstract: In this publication we work towards providing fast, sensitive and selective analysis of explosive compounds collected on swabs using paper spray mass spectrometry. We have (a) increased the size of the paper spray substrate to 1.6×2.1 cm for compatibility with current practise in swabbing for explosive material; (b) developed a method for determining a successful extraction of analyte from the substrate to reduce false negative events; and (c) expanded the range of analytes that can be detected using paper spray to include the peroxide explosive HMTD, as well as nitroglycerine (NG), picric acid (PA) and tetryl. We report the development of a 30 s method for the simultaneous detection of 7 different explosive materials using PSMS with detection limits below 25 pg, as well as detection of HMTD at 2500 pg, showing an improvement on previously published work.

TL;DR: It is shown that paper and Nomex® are viable collection materials, with NomeX providing cleaner spectra and therefore greater potential for integration with portable mass spectrometers and by coupling the swab spray ionisation source with FAIMS, it is possible to reduce background interferences.

TL;DR: A two‐step process of paper spray followed by LC/MS is developed to rapidly screen a large number of samples and confirm any disputed results, which demonstrates the applicability for testing medication adherence from a fingerprint.