Mass spectrometric instrumentation for high-priority areas of science and technology in Russia

Mass spectrometry is a multi-purpose high-end analytical technique used to determine the composition and impurities in any substance or raw material as required by modern process technologies. Several instrumentation companies over the world produce a wide nomenclature of mass spectrometers for industrial, environmental, medical and many other applications. These instruments are quite perfect, versatile yet very expensive and costly to serve. For a long time Russia was the world's leader in isotopic mass spectrometry, made competitive mass spectrometers for elemental and molecular analysis. In 1999 development of domestic mass spectrometers in Russia was resumed. The Russian Federation Ministry of Atomic Energy started the development of a series of special-purpose mass spectrometers to be used in nuclear-fuel technology cycles. In 2000 the Ministry of Industry, Science and Technologies of the Russian Federation set up a R&D project "Development of a mobile quadrupole mass spectrometer-chromatograph (MS-GC)" and in 2002 a R&D project "Time-of-flight mass spectrometer with an orthogonal and electrospray ion source" to be combined with a liquid chromatograph. The work under these projects is performed by two interbranch scientific and technical collectives including 1.. Institutions within the Ministry of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation, RAS and private firms 2.(SPEKTRON-Analyt Close JSC (St. Petersburg) and others). 3.Institute for Analytical Instrumentation RAS, Moscow State University, ALFA Limited Company 4.(St. Petersburg) and others. The paper presents the program of further mass spectrometry development in Russia.