Structure Analysis of Polyphenylene Sulfide End Groups 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. The combination of FD and time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOFMS) enables calculation of the molecular formula of the measured compound. The 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 measurement result of Polyphenylene Sulfide (PPS), an engineering plastic with excellent heat and chemical resistance. It is known that differences in the manufacturing process of PPS appear in the end groups, so structure analysis of the end groups is important. However, PPS is difficult to measure by LC-MS because it is insoluble in common solvents. Therefore, the end groups were estimated using FD, which can measure PPS oligomers even when they are dispersed in a solvent.