Authors: Auristela SolàVázquez Beatriz Fernández José M CostaFernández Rosario Pereiro Alfredo SanzMedel
Publish Date: 2014/02/12
Volume: 406, Issue: 29, Pages: 7431-7443
Abstract
The performance of radiofrequency rf millisecond pulsed glow discharge PGD coupled to a fast orthogonal timeofflight mass spectrometer TOFMS for chemical characterization and quantification of organic volatile compounds was investigated by using two different GD chamber designs The designs investigated had substantial differences in the way that the volatile organic compound is introduced into the GD and the distance between the cathode and the sampling cone of the mass spectrometer Bromochloromethane was selected as the model analyte because of the practical interest of determining trihalomethanes at low concentrations and also because of both its low boiling point to avoid problems associated with condensations in the interface and the fact that it has two different heteroatoms making the fragmentation patterns easier to follow Pulse shapes of element fragment and molecular parent ions obtained by using the two GD chambers under investigation were critically compared Results revealed the critical effect of the GD chamber geometry in obtaining the three types of chemical information temporally discriminated The spectra of the gaseous samples and of a polymer containing TBBPA solid sample were also compared Detection limits for bromochloromethane in the order of low ng L−1 and the required high tolerance of the plasmas to the introduction of organic vapours were achieved using one of the proposed GD designs The capability of the designed system for the analysis of other volatile compounds for example dimethyl disulfide and dimethyl selenide was also successfully evaluated making use of the analytical potential of the information obtained from the different pulse time regionsFinancial support from “Plan Nacional de I + D + I” Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and FEDER Program through CTQ201002309 Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación Spain is gratefully acknowledged Finally we specially thank the contract with Horiba Jobin Yvon for the loan of the GDTOFMS instrument
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