Trends show that the fraction of the world's population with electronic devices using modern integrated circuits is increasing at a rapid rate. To meet consumer demands: less expensive, faster, and smaller electronics; while still making a profit, manufacturers must shrink transistor dimensions while increasing the number of transistors per integrated circuit; a trend predicted by Gorden E. Moore more than 44 years prior. As CMOS transistors scale down in size, new techniques such as atomic-layer deposition (ALD) are used to grow features one atomic layer at a time. ALD and other manufacturing processes are requiring increasingly stringent purities of process gases and liquids in order to minimize circuit killing defects which reduces yield and drives up manufacturing cost. Circuit killing defects caused by impurity incursions into UHP gas distribution system can come from a variety of sources and one of the impurity transport mechanisms investigated was back diffusion; the transport of impurities against convective flow. Once impurity incursions transpire, entire production lines are shut down and purging with UHP gas is initiated; a process that can take months thus resulting in tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue and substantial environment, safety, and health (ESH) impacts associated with high purge gas consumption. A combination of experimental investigation and process simulation was used to analyze the effect of various operational parameters on impurity back diffusion into UHP gas distribution systems. Advanced and highly sensitive analytical equipment, such as the Tiger Optics MTO 1000 H2O cavity ring-down spectrometer (CRDS), was used in experiments to measure real time back diffusing moisture concentrations exiting an electro-polished stainless-steel (EPSS) UHP distribution pipe. Design and operating parameters; main and lateral flow rates, system pressure, restrictive flow orifice (RFO) aperture size, and lateral length were changed to impact the extent of back diffusing impurities from a venting lateral. The process model developed in this work was validated by comparing its predictions with data from the experiment test bed. The process model includes convection, molecular diffusion in the bulk, surface diffusion, boundary layer transport, and all modes of dispersion; applicable in both laminar and turbulent flow regimes. Fluid dynamic properties were directly measured or were obtained by solving Navier-Stokes and continuity equations. Surface diffusion as well as convection and dispersion in the bulk fluid played a strong role in the transport of moisture from vents and lateral branches into the main line. In this analysis, a dimensionless number (Peclet Number) was derived and applied as the key indicator of the relative significance of various transport mechanisms in moisture back-diffusion. Guidelines and critical values of Peclet number were identified for assuring the operating conditions meet the purity requirements at the point of use while minimizing UHP gas usage. These guidelines allowed the determination of lateral lengths, lateral diameters, flow rates, and restrictive flow device configurations to minimize contamination and UHP gas consumption. Once a distribution system is contaminated, a significant amount of purge time is required to recover the system background due to the strong interactions between moisture molecules and the inner surfaces of the components in a gas distribution system. Because of the very high cost of UHP gases and factory downtime, it is critical for high-volume semiconductor manufacturers to reduce purge gas usage as well as purge time during the dry-down process. The removal of moisture contamination in UHP gas distribution systems was approached by using a novel technique dubbed pressure cyclic purge (PCP). EPSS piping was contaminated with moisture, from a controlled source, and then purged using a conventional purge technique or a PCP technique. Moisture removal rates and overall moisture removal was determined by measuring gas phase moisture concentration in real time via a CRDS moisture analyzer. When compared to conventional purge, PCP reduced the time required and purge gas needed to clean the UHP gas distribution systems. However, results indicate that indiscriminately initiating PCP can have less than ideal or even detrimental results. An investigation of purge techniques on the removal of gas phase, chemisorbed, and physisorbed moisture, coupled with the model predictions, led to the testing of hybrid PCP. The hybrid PCP approach proved to be the most adaptable purge technique and was used in next phase of testing and modeling. Experiments and modeling progressed to include testing the effectiveness of hybrid PCP in systems with laterals; more specifically, laterals that are "dead volumes" and results show that hybrid PCP becomes more purge time and purge gas efficient in systems with increasing number and size of dead volumes. The process model was used as a dry-down optimization tool requiring inputs of; geometry and size, temperature, starting contamination level, pressure swing limits of inline equipment, target cleanliness, and optimization goals; such as, minimizing pure time, minimizing purge gas usage, or minimizing total dry-down cost.

Incident ions, from a Van de Graaff accelerator, in the MeV energy range, deposit their energy into the near surface of a sample. This, in turn, causes atomic, molecular, cluster and fragment ion species to be desorbed and ionized, while simultaneously emitting characteristic elemental X-rays. The multielemental X-rays provide qualitative elemental information, which may be deconvoluted and fit to a theoretical X-ray spectrum, generated by a quantitative analysis program, GUPIX, while the atomic, molecular, cluster, and fragment ion species are identified using a quadrupole mass spectrometer. This methodology directly links elemental determinations with chemical speciation.The development of this particle desorption ionization particle induced X-ray emission mass spectrometer, the PDI-PIXE-MS (or PIXE-MS) instrument, which has the ability to collect both qualitative multielemental X-rays and mass spectral data is described. This multiplexed instrument has been designed to use millimeter-sized MeV particle beams as a desorption ionization (PDI) and X-ray emission (PIXE) source. Two general methods have been employed, one simultaneous and the other sequential. Both methods make use of a novel X-ray/ion source developed for use with the quadrupole mass spectrometer used in these experiments. The first method uses a MeV heavy ion particle beam, typically oxygen, to desorb and ionize the sample, while simultaneously producing characteristic multielemental X-rays. The resulting molecular, cluster, and fragment ions are collected by the mass spectrometer, and the X-rays are collected using a Si-PIN photodiode detector in conjunction with a multichannel analyzer (MCA). Heavy ions of N+, O+, O+2, Ar+, and Kr+ have been investigated, although heavy ion X-ray and mass spectra have focused on the use of oxygen particle beams. The second method is performed by first collecting the X-ray data with a MeV ion beam of He+ ions, then desorbing and ionizing the sample species with a MeV particle beam of heavy ions, producing good ion yields, for mass spectral data collection. The potential development of a scanning microprobe instrument, that would provide micron-scale, imaged, multielemental, and molecular and fragment ion chemical information is being investigated through the development of this prototype PIXE-MS instrument.

Two popular workflows exist for quantitative proteome analysis: two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D-PAGE), with staining to visualize proteins, and multidimensional solution phase separations of isotopically labelled peptides coupled to mass spectrometry (MS). However, the development of an alternative strategy, which combines easy-to-read differential profiling as seen in 2D-PAGE, with the sensitivity of MS for detection and identification, is needed. This thesis presents work towards the development of a workflow for high-throughput protein biomarker discovery. Multidimensional separations are vital to obtain sufficient fractionation of complex proteome mixtures. As a first dimension of separation, ion exchange chromatography (IEC) is a common choice, though it has yet to be thoroughly evaluated in terms of its effectiveness as a proteome prefractionation tool. This study used a defined set of protein standards to establish the resolution and proteome yield obtained through IEC. The evaluation uncovered significant bias in terms of protein recovery and separation. To improve throughput of a multidimensional separation strategy, a multiplexed (8-column) reversed phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) platform was constructed. The system design allowed for even distribution of flow across all columns with limited cross-loading during sample loading. This system was directly coupled to matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) through a novel well plate device. The Teflon wells allowed for high recovery and no cross-contamination during collection/spotting, improved throughput, and greatly reduced the number of sample manipulation steps. An evaluation of MALDI MS, using the ThermoFisher vMALDI LTQ, for quantitative profiling was performed, employing the multiplexed LC-MALDI platform. The use of MALDI MS allowed for fast (< 5.5 hours) acquisition of quantitative data from isotopically differentiated samples partitioned over 640 fractions from two-dimensional LC. Proteins comprising 0.1% of the proteome were detected and quantified using this method. Finally, the effects of varying concentrations of acetonitrile (ACN) upon the products generated from tryptic digestions were explored. Poor enzymatic efficiency in 80% ACN was found to be responsible for an increased concentration of peptides containing missed cleavage sites. These peptides often contained unique amino acid sequences, which were not detected from complete digestions, resulting in improved protein sequence coverage following MS analysis.

Tuberculosis continues to be a major threat in public health; 8.8 million incidence of TB has been reported and 2 million deaths every year. Diagnosis of TB is impeded by slow growth of an organism with a generation time of 21 days. The emergence of multidrug-resistant TB isolates which are resistant to rifampicin and isoniazid worsened the treatment programme. Furthermore, surfacing of extensively drug-resistant TB isolates especially in HIV positive patients has led to a treatment failure. Currently available diagnostic methods are time consuming and laborious. Polymerase chain reaction-based assay proved to have a better resolution for TB strain discrimination, nevertheless are costly and cannot be routinely employed in resource poor settings. As a result there is an urgent need of cheap, cost effective and rapid diagnostic methods that will reduce a turnaround time. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry potentially offers an alternative rapid and cheaper method for discrimination of TB isolates. Proper discrimination of TB isolates depends on the sample preparation method that is capable of yielding high protein content. Conventional formic/ethanol sample preparation was investigated for mycobacteria MALDI-TOF mass spectrometric analysis. Poor quality of spectra was obtained due to a complex cell wall structure of mycobacteria which released less amounts of proteins. Further attempts were made to optimize the sample preparation method by introducing glass beads for maximum cell wall disruption. Non-consistent spectra were obtained in some mycobacterial strain; therefore it was not used as a method of choice. Introduction of delipidation step using chloroform/methanol (1:1, v/v) before formic/ethanol sample preparation step, led to a generation of reproducible and consistent spectra. This newly developed method was selected to extract protein content from large number of clinical TB isolates. With MALDI-TOF MS and chloroform/methanol-based method, all mycobacterial isolates used in the proof-of-concept were correctly identified and clustered. Fifty six of sixty clinical TB isolates were correctly identified using Biotyper software. Four were incorrectly identified; it might be possible that they carry mutations in unknown regions in their genome which led to a translation of proteins that affected the overall spectra profile. MALDI-TOF MS showed the potential to be used in the clinical laboratories for discrimination of TB isolates at lower costs. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2013.

This dissertation presents the application of mass spectrometry to the detection and characterization of microorganisms based on biomarker identification and DNA analysis. Two major topics are covered: affinity capture mass spectrometry using immunoassay methods and methods involving insertion of membrane receptors into polymerized planar supported lipid bilayers; and the application of mass spectrometry for use in clinical microbiology for the identification of microorganisms causing bloodstream infections. Affinity capture mass spectrometry on immunoassay-based platforms studied the capture of Protein A from Staphylococcus aureus , demonstrating capture that is both selective and sensitive. Experiments illustrated successful capture from a purified source and cell lysates. Affinity capture using receptors inserted into polymerized lipid bilayers was also performed using GM1 and cholera toxin subunit B, demonstrating the enhanced stability offered by polymerizing the lipid bilayers such that direct ionization could be performed. Detection of protein binding was achieved with mass spectrometry at low molar ratios of receptor, and enzymatic digestion experiments on the protein retained at the surface illustrated the ability to characterize the protein ligand bound, lending support to using this technique for reverse pharmacological applications. Lastly, experiments demonstrated that affinity capture of surface-bound proteins can also be used to extract cells from complex mixture prior to the polymerase chain reaction, illustrating utility as a pre-treatment for detecting microorganisms in blood samples. Mass spectrometry was applied to detection of microorganisms from blood culture bottles collected from patients with bloodstream infections. Polymerase chain reaction electrospray ionization and whole cell matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry were used to characterize hematopathogens. High diagnostic accuracy was demonstrated with respect to culture-based testing and these two platforms were compared considering accuracy in identification, time to result, and cost benefit analysis. The experiments presented here cover a broad range of detection strategies for identifying proteins and microorganisms. The affinity capture techniques describe the first application of peptide capture and polymerized bilayers for mass spectrometric analysis, and the clinical mass spectrometry work demonstrates validation of two emerging techniques and the first comparative study on both platforms simultaneously. All research presented here demonstrates promise for application of mass spectrometry in diagnostic biology.

Carbon has been used electrochemically in various forms for water treatment and the carbon aerogel is one of them. Carbon Aerogels (CA) are used as electrodes due to their high surface capacity and high electrical conductivity. They are also known as Carbon Nanofoams (CNF). CA electrodes attract oppositely charged ions that are nearby. This concept is known as Capacitive De-Ionization (CDI). The use of CA in CDI for water purification is well documented, but not much work has been done on regeneration of CA electrodes. Once saturated, these electrodes lose their ability to adsorb additional ions and it must be restored by regeneration. If they cannot be regenerated, they would need to be replaced, which would greatly increase the cost of the treatment they are expensive. The goal of this study is to obtain data to define optimal regeneration conditions and to develop predictive capability by examining desorption behavior of adsorbed ions on CA electrodes. This study focuses on desorption of adsorbed ions and regeneration of CA. Various experiments were conducted to explore the effects on regeneration of CA of shorting of electrodes, change of polarity of electrodes, flow speed of water over CA electrodes, and temperature of regeneration water. The optimal combination of experimental variables was identified and was used for remaining experiments that tested the effect of size, charge and mass of adsorbed ions on regeneration of CA. Also, the effect of thickness of CA and its pore size on regeneration of CA was studied. Results indicated that application of reverse potential for the first few minutes of the total regeneration time provided the greatest regeneration. Longer application of reverse potential did not result in higher regeneration. The regeneration behavior when no potential applied with and without shorting was as expected. Application of reverse potential with variable temperature or variable flow speed of water over CA surfaces provided results that were different from the ones that were obtained with no potential being applied with or without shorting of electrodes.

No description available.

There has been growing demands towards the efficient production of enantiopure compounds through either asymmetric synthesis or separation from racemic mixtures. Recent studies have examined numerous different methods that may address this challenge. One of these methods involved the interaction of chiral molecules on achiral metal surfaces such as copper to create chiral templates while another method utilizes the interaction of chiral molecules on intrinsically chiral surfaces. Earlier studies using nonhybrid Density Functional Theory (DFT) functional has provided some insights into the geometric structures and relative energies of some of these interactions, but it failed to achieve quantitative agreement with experimental studies. Using dispersion corrected DFT functionals, this thesis present a study of chemisorbed dense adlayers of glycine and alanine on Cu(110) and Cu(3,1,17), physisorbed R-3-methycyclohexanone (R-3MCHO) on Cu(100), Cu(110), Cu(111), Cu(221), and Cu(643)R, and the hydrogenation of formaldehyde and methoxide on Zn or Zr heteroatoms promoted Cu surfaces. In the dense glycine and alanine adlayer study, we have resolved a disagreement between experimental observation made on LEED, STM, and XPD, and we showed that heterochiral and homochiral glycine adlayer coexist on Cu(110). Our model failed to show the minute enantiospecificity for dense alanine adlayer on Cu(3,1,17) which indicated a numeric limitation for computational modeling of surface adsorption. In the physisorbed system, the dispersion corrected methods calculated adsorption energies were in better quantitative agreement with the experimentally observed values than the nonhybrid functionals, but it also created a significant overestimation of total adsorption energies. On the other hand, our model had indicated a previously unexpected adsorbate-induced surface reconstruction on Cu(110). This is promising news in term of computational modeling's capability in examining surface-adsorbate interaction on an atomic scale. As for the hydrogenation of formaldehyde and methoxide on copper surfaces, the model showed that the increased binding strength between the reaction intermediates and the heteroatom promoted copper surfaces to be the primary contributor of the increased reaction rates. Furthermore, our model had also indicated that while clustered heteroatoms are relatively rare, a significant portion of reaction takes place near these clustered structures. It is our hope that the results and techniques presented in this thesis can be used to better understand and predict the interaction of more complex surface-adsorbate interactions.

Increasing concern about the pollution of environment by inorganic and organic chemicals arising from naturally occurring ecological events and industrial processes has created a need for the search of new techniques in the removal of these contaminants. One of the natural material that can be used in such processes is clay. Clay minerals have large surface areas and high cation exchange capacities which enables them to be modified by cationic surfactants. The material prepared, often called as &amp / #8216 / organoclay&amp / #8217 / , can be used to remove hydrophobic organic and anionic contaminants from polluted water. Among the anionic contaminants, oxyanions such as nitrate, chromate are detrimental to human life and environment even at &micro / g/L- mg/L levels. Application of organoclays for their removal from polluted water appears as one of the practical and rather cheap solution. In this study, a local clay from Ankara-Kalecik (Han&ccedil / ili Bentonite) was modified by hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (HDTMA-Br) to a level of twice of its cation exchange capacity. This process alters the negatively charged surface of the clay into a positively charged one, providing sites for the removal of anionic contaminants. In this study, the degree of HDTMA+ uptake by the clay within a period of eight hours is found to be 97% of the initial amount added. In desorption studies it was revealed that only about 1% of the sorbed HTDMA+ was leached in a seven days of water-organoclay interaction revealing a rather stable organoclay structure in aqeous media. Sorption experiments with nitrate, borate, and chromate solutions were performed in order to determine the anion sorption capacity of the organoclays prepared. It turns out that while untreated clay has insignificant capacity, the modified clay can remove considerable amount of nitrate and chromate ions from aqeous solutions. While the nitrate sorption was increased about eleven fold, change in chromate sorption was reached to a level of twenty fold compared to that of the untreated clay. Sorption data for nitrate and chromate are both well described by the Langmuir isotherms. No significant change was observed in case of borate-organoclay interaction. Desorption of nitrate and chromate ions from organoclay surface were also investigated. Sorption of these oxyanions were found to be almost irreversible in aqeous media. The results imply that a properly prepared organoclay can be used for the removal of oxyanions, such as nitrate and chromate from polluted water systems.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wyoming, 2005. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on March 10, 2008). Includes bibliographical references.