Research interests
The goal of Dr. Trimpin’s research is to develop new methods and instrumentation for the structural characterization of materials ranging from obstinate small to fragile large molecules and to apply these new methods to important structural problems in such areas as cell biology and material sciences. She has pioneered the development and use of solvent-free matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) method for the analysis of, for example, solubility-restricted bacteriorhodopsin, an α-integral membrane protein intrinsically important for cell function, and β-amyloid peptides involved with plaque formation in Alzheimer Disease as well as an insoluble polyfluorene, a synthetic polymer with possible electronic device applications. The same principle led to the development of a matrix ionization method that allows the production of charge remote fragmentation on modern high energy TOF/TOF mass spectrometers and permits re-visiting ion chemistry for the structural analysis of fatty acids, important structural components of lipids and thus cell architecture. Currently, the solvent-free methodology is the most sensitive approach for insoluble and/or ionization retarded small and large molecules but also provides valuable advantages for soluble, segregating systems. Dr. Trimpin is presently extending the methodology by developing ways of hyphenating solvent-free ionization methods to solvent-free gas phase ion separation based on ion mobility spectrometry (IMS). This is an effective way to reduce complexity leading to broad-scale analysis independent of solubility.
Dr. Sarah Trimpin holds an Organic Chemistry Degree from the Max-Planck-Institute of Polymer Research (
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