Improving the Sensitivity of Fourier Transform Mass Spectrometer (Orbitrap) for Online Measurements of Atmospheric Vapors

Orbitrap Fourier transform mass spectrometry coupled with chemical ionization (CI) is a new-generation technique for online analysis in atmospheric chemistry. The advantage of the high resolving power of the CI-Orbitrap has been compromised by its relatively low sensitivity to trace compounds (e.g., <10(6) molecules cm(-3)) in complex gaseous mixtures, limiting its application in online atmospheric measurements. In this study, we improve the sensitivity of a Q Exactive Orbitrap by optimizing the parameters governing the signal-to-noise ratio. The influence of other parameters related to ion transmission and fragmentation is also discussed. Using gaseous compounds in an environmental chamber, we show that by increasing the number of ions in the analyzer, the number of microscans (i.e., transients), and the averaging time, the sensitivity of the CI-Orbitrap to trace compounds can be substantially improved, and the linear detection range can be extended by a factor of 50 compared to standard settings. The CI-Orbitrap with optimized parameters is then used to measure oxygenated organic molecules in the atmosphere. By improving the sensitivity, the number of detected compounds above the 50% sensitivity threshold (i.e., the signal intensity at which the sensitivity is decreased by half) is increased from 129 to 644 in the atmospheric measurements. The QExactive CI-Orbitrap with improved sensitivity can detect ions with concentrations down to similar to 5 x 10(4) molecules cm(-3) (1 h averaging), and its 50% sensitivity threshold is now below 10(5) molecules cm(-3).

Automated summary

In this study, the sensitivity of Q Exactive Orbitrap was improved by optimizing parameters, which resulted in a 50-fold increase in the detection range of trace compounds by CI-Orbitrap. The number of detected compounds in atmospheric measurements was significantly increased by improving the sensitivity.