Analysis of Polyethyleneimine using Field Desorption (FD) of JMS-T2000GC AccuTOF™ GC-Alpha
Introduction
Field Desorption (FD) is an ionization method that utilizes the tunneling effect in a high electric field generated between an emitter coated with a sample and an electrode to which a high voltage is applied. It is known as a soft ionization method that provides only molecular weight information because the internal energy given to the sample during ionization is low and fragmentation is unlikely to occur. In FD measurements, the sample-coated emitter is introduced directly to the ion source using a dedicated probe. Therefore, it is possible to measure difficult-to-volatile compounds, polar compounds, thermally unstable compounds, etc., which are difficult to measure with GC-MS. The combination of FD and time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOFMS) enables calculation of the molecular formula of the measured compound. An overview of FD and sampling technique in the gas chromatograph time-of-flight mass spectrometer JMS-T2000GC AccuTOF™ GC-Alpha are described in MSTips No. 355 and MSTips No. 403.
In this MSTips, we report the analysis results of a water-soluble polymer polyethyleneimine (PEI), which contains many amines in its structure, by using FD of JMS-T2000GC.