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Application of ion mobility spectrometry to the identification of trace levels of explosives in the presence of complex matrices
Author(s) -
Garofolo Fabio,
Migliozzi Vincenzo,
Roio Bernardo,
Davies John H.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
rapid communications in mass spectrometry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.528
H-Index - 136
eISSN - 1097-0231
pISSN - 0951-4198
DOI - 10.1002/rcm.1290080707
Subject(s) - chemistry , ion mobility spectrometry , explosive material , trace (psycholinguistics) , identification (biology) , mass spectrometry , ion , ion mobility spectrometry–mass spectrometry , environmental chemistry , chromatography , analytical chemistry (journal) , selected reaction monitoring , tandem mass spectrometry , organic chemistry , linguistics , philosophy , botany , biology
Methods are described for the analysis of trace levels of explosives on materials collected at the scene of real detonations. The methods exploition mobility spectrometry (IMS) to confirm and enhance the results obtained by high performance liquid chromatography with an ultraviolet detector (HPLC‐UV). Solvent‐extracted samples contain many interfering substances and are cleaned up by solid‐phase extraction (SPE) prior to HPLC fractionation. Explosive‐containing HPLC fractions are analysed by IMS after removal of solvent by vacuum centrifuge. IMS detection limits for explosives, typically a few hundreds of picograms, are at least an order of magnitude lower than those for UV detection. SPE and HPLC fractionation also removes interfering substances that can otherwise suppress IMS detection. Explosives discussed are di‐ and trinitrotoluene, ethylene glycol dinitrate, nitroglycerin, pentaerythritol tetranitrate, hexahydro‐1,3,5‐trinitro‐1,3,5‐triazine, octahydro‐1,3,5,7‐tetranitro‐1,3,5,7‐tetraazine, and N ‐methyl‐ N ,2,4,6‐tetranitroaniline.