Solid-phase microextraction (SPME), time-compressed chromatography (TCC), and time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOFMS) were examined for their suitability and compatibility for rapid sampling, separation, and detection of apple flavor volatiles. Flavor-contributing volatile compounds were found to have relatively high partition coefficients on a 100 µm thick coating of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) on a SPME fiber. The time required to saturate the PDMS coating was highly volatiledependent, varying from less than 2 min to greater than 30 min. However, the response of this system was linear in the ppb to ppm range when the adsorption duration was standardized. The speed of the TOF mass spectrometer permitted identification and quantification of compounds having chromatographic peak widths of only a fraction of a second. The unskewed nature of fragmentation patterns obtained allowed individual component spectral characterization of unknown compounds even when not fully chromatographically separated. Thus, the time required for chromatography could be reduced by an order of magnitude without loss in analytical performance. Typical analysis times for complex mixtures were 2-5 min as compared with 20-60 min required for standard purgeand-trap analyses.

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The unique focusing properties of the curved-field reflectron provide a simple solution to the problem of compensating for the broad range of energies of product ions produced postsource in a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. This has been shown previously for the technique known as postsource decay, but in this report we demonstrate its use for tandem time-of-flight mass spectrometry using a high-performance MALDI time-of-flight instrument modified by the addition of a collision chamber to enable the recording of mass-selected product ions formed by collision-induced dissociation (CID). In particular, the curved-field reflectron enables the use of the full 20-keV kinetic energy provided by the ion source extraction voltage as the collision energy in the laboratory frame and obviates the need to reaccelerate the product ions, using a second "source" or "lift" cell. Results are presented for the collision-induced dissociation of fullerenes over a range of collision gas pressures and precursor ion attenuation. In addition, CID tandem mass spectra are obtained for several peptides.

With the rapid development of nanotechnology during the last decades, the ability to detect and control individual objects at the nanoscale has enabled us to deal with complex biomedical challenges. In cancer imaging, novel nanoparticles (NPs) offer promising potential to identify single cancer cells and precisely label larger areas of cancer tissues. Herein, a new class of size tunable core–shell composite (Au–SiO2–WO3) nanoparticles is reported. These nanoparticles display an easily improvable ≈103 surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) enhancement factor with a double Au shell for dried samples over Si wafers and several orders of magnitude for liquid samples. WO3 core nanoparticles measuring 20–50 nm in diameter are sheathed by an intermediate 10–60 nm silica layer, produced by following the Stöber‐based process and Turkevich method, followed by a 5–20 nm thick Au outer shell. By attaching 4‐mercaptobenzoic acid (4‐MBA) molecules as Raman reporters to the Au, high‐resolution Raman maps that pinpoint the nanoparticles' location are obtained. The preliminary results confirm their advantageous SERS properties for single‐molecule detection, significant cell viability after 24 h and in vitro cell imaging using coherent anti‐stokes Raman scattering. The long‐term objective is to measure SERS nanoparticles in vivo using near‐infrared light.