Advances in field-portable mobile GC/MS instrumentation

Both vehicle-portable and man-portable GC/MS techniques and applications are currently undergoing rapid further development. Vehicle-portable GC/MS technology is expanding into the area of temporally and spatially resolved mapping, formerly accessible only to stand-off methods. Also, unmanned vehicles such as UAVs and drones are expected to play an increasingly important role as experimental platforms for the future. Man-portable instrumentation appears to be evolving from the unwieldy “luggables” to the readily wearable backpacks and, possibly, even handhelds. In the next 5 to 10 years this may open the way for the “chemical Geiger counter” or “definitive electronic nose”. The above developments are discussed from the perspective of field-portable, mobile GC/MS, with special emphasis on performance breakthroughs leading to potentially new applications, rather than from a strictly historical point of view. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Field Analyt Chem Technol 4: 3–13, 2000