Journal
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
Volume 91, Issue 15, Pages 9419-9423Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.9b02093
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Funding
- University of Lyon
- ERC [638703]
- Academy of Finland [317380, 320094]
- French National program LEFE (Les Enveloppes Fluides et l'Environnement)
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While acknowledged as key components in the formation of new particles in the atmosphere, the accurate characterization of gaseous (highly) oxygenated organic compounds remains challenging and requires analytical developments. Earlier studies have successfully used the nitrate ion (NO3) based chemical ionization (CI) coupled to atmospheric pressure interface time-of-flight mass spectrometry (CI-APi-TOF) for monitoring these compounds. Despite many breakthroughs in recent years, the CI-APi-TOF has many limitations, preventing for instance the unambiguous ion identification of overlapping peaks. To tackle this analytical challenge, we developed a CI interface coupled to an ultrahigh-resolution Orbitrap mass spectrometer (CI-Orbitrap). We show that the CI-Orbitrap has similar sensitivity and selectivity as the CI-APi-TOF, but with over an order of magnitude higher mass resolving power (up to 140 000). Equally importantly, the CI-Orbitrap allows tandem mass spectrometry, providing the possibility for structural elucidation of the highly oxygenated organic molecules (HOM). As a proof of concept, we characterized HOM formed during the ozonolysis of two biogenic compounds (alpha-pinene and limonene), under different environmental conditions in a flow reactor. The CI-Orbitrap exhibited high sensitivity to both HOM and radical species, while easily separating ions of different elemental composition in cases where the more common TOF applications would not have been able to distinguish all ions. Our tandem mass spectrometry analyses revealed distinct fingerprint spectra for all the studied HOM. Overall, the CI-Orbitrap is an extremely promising instrument, and it provides a much-needed extension to ongoing research on HOM, with potential to impact also many other fields within atmospheric chemistry.
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