Low-Temperature Plasma Ionization-Mass Spectrometry for the Analysis of Compounds in Organic Aerosol Particles

Abstract

Low-temperature plasma ionization, a technique that causes minimal fragmentation during ionization, is investigated as an ionization technique for mass spectrometric detection of the compounds in ambient organic aerosols in real time. The experiments presented in this paper demonstrate that ions are generated from compounds in the aerosol particles. The utility of this technique for detection of both positive and negative ions from the pyrolysate of multiple natural polymers is presented. Ultimately, low-temperature plasma ionization is shown to be a promising ionization technique for detection of compounds in organic aerosols by mass spectrometry.

Characterization of a non-thermal plasma source for use as a mass specrometric calibration tool and non-radioactive aerosol charger

“…5. Similar results for different bipolar charging devices have been found by Kallinger et al (2012) and Steiner and Reischl (2012). The latter analyzed the effects of carrier gas contaminants on the charging probability which influences the electrical mobility spectrum.…”

“…According to the mobility and mass spectrometric measurements, the comparison of the plasma charger with the americium bipolar diffu-sion charger indicates the same negative ion species, whereas for the positive ions, the measurements reveal a slight deviation. At this point it should be noted that the chemical composition of the charger ions is affected by the tubing material and contaminations as discussed by Steiner and Reischl (2012).…”

“…In this study we assume the resulting deviation in size distribution is two-fold. Firstly, contamination of the X-Ray charger from previous experiments with ammonium sulfate leads to an increase of about 0.7 nm in particle diameter for the observed bipolar diffusion charger (Steiner and Reischl, 2012). Secondly, the application of a unsuitable Figure 8.…”

“…In the past, various studies have characterized the charging probabilities and mobility spectra of the ions generated by AC-corona-, X-Ray-or alpha-radiation-based chargers (Wiedensohler et al, 1986;Steiner and Reischl, 2012;Kallinger et al, 2012;Kallinger and Szymanski, 2015). These works revealed deviations in the charge distribution to classical theory, which result in an increased total measurement error (Johnson et al, 2020).…”

Characterization of a Non-Thermal Plasma Source for the Use as a Mass Spec Calibration Tool and Non-Radioactive Aerosol Charger

“…Most of these works were focused on generating plasmas for industrial or space applications (Michau et al, 2016;Deka et al, 2017;Kopnin et al, 2018;Yaroshenko et al, 2018;Intra and Yawootti, 2019). However, one of the most recent developments is the application of plasma in aerosol related topics, such as plasma treatment of aerosol particles (Uner and Thimsen, 2017) and, as a novel topic, charging of aerosol particles or ionization of trace gas compounds (Spencer et al, 2015;Yang et al, 2016;Intra and Yawootti, 2019).…”