When fast detection of chemical warfare agents in the field is required, the ion mobility spectrometer may be the only suitable option. This article provides an essential survey of the different ion mobility spectrometry detection technologies. (To listen to a podcast about this feature, please go to the Analytical Chemistry multimedia page at pubs.acs.org/page/ancham/audio/index.html.).

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Differential Mobility Spectrometry (DMS), also called as FAIMS is a variation of atmospheric pressure ion mobility measurement techniques and is capable of providing information about the electric field-mobility dependence of ions. In this method, a combined electric field is used. This field consists of asymmetric oscillating electric field of high intensity and low static field component. Analytical information in DMS is 2-dimensional dependence of ionic current on oscillating field amplitude and the value of static field intensity. The measurement of DMS signal for whole ranges of both variables is time consuming and also generates lot of data. It is a disadvantage of DMS method, which limits the use of this otherwise powerful technology in real time applications that require a response time of few seconds. This paper presents a way to limit measurement time by heuristic knowledge of the properties of the data space and another method based on the concept of Shannon Entropy to find operating parameters satisfying both separation and signal to noise ratio requirements.