Thermal vaporization-vacuum ultraviolet laser ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry of single aerosol particles

D Craig Sykes; Ephraim Woods 3rd; Geoffrey D Smith; Tomas Baer; Roger E Miller

doi:10.1021/ac011225a

Thermal vaporization-vacuum ultraviolet laser ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry of single aerosol particles

Anal Chem. 2002 May 1;74(9):2048-52. doi: 10.1021/ac011225a.

Authors

D Craig Sykes¹, Ephraim Woods 3rd, Geoffrey D Smith, Tomas Baer, Roger E Miller

Affiliation

¹ Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 27599-3290, USA.

PMID: 12035761
DOI: 10.1021/ac011225a

Abstract

Single aerosol particles of ethylene glycol and oleic acid are vaporized on a heater at temperatures between 500 and 700 K, and the resulting vapor plume is ionized by a 10.5-eV vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) laser. The mass spectra are compared to those obtained by CO2 laser vaporization followed by VUV laser ionization. The relative intensities of the parent and fragment ion peaks are remarkably similar for the two modes of vaporization. A Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution of speeds accurately describes the dependence of the signal as a function of the VUV laser pulse timing. The signal levels obtained with this design are sufficient to obtain good-quality mass spectra.