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Detailed characterization of poly(2‐ethyl‐2oxazoline)s by energy variable collision‐induced dissociation study
Author(s) -
Altuntas Esra,
Weber Christine,
Schubert Ulrich S.
Publication year - 2013
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.6542
Subject(s) - chemistry , mass spectrometry , polymer , degree of polymerization , collision induced dissociation , oxazoline , fragmentation (computing) , electrospray ionization , molar mass , analytical chemistry (journal) , electrospray , polymerization , tandem mass spectrometry , chromatography , organic chemistry , computer science , catalysis , operating system
RATIONALE Poly(2‐oxazoline)s are important polymers and can be considered as pseudo‐peptides which makes them important for biomedical and life science applications. This prompts the need for a detailed characterization of these polymers via different analytical tools such as mass spectrometry. Here, the energy‐variable collision‐induced dissociation (CID) of poly(2‐ethyl‐2‐oxazoline)s was studied by electrospray ionization quadrupole time‐of‐flight tandem mass spectrometry (ESI‐QTOFMS/MS) to gain further structural information about this polymer type. METHODS All polymers were analyzed using manual flow injection of samples into an ESI‐QTOF mass spectrometer. Mass spectra (MS and MS/MS) were obtained in the positive ion mode over a mass‐to‐charge ( m/z ) range from 50 to 3000. RESULTS The dependency of the fragmentation patterns as a function of collision energy was examined and the characteristic collision energy (CCE or CE 50 ) values for various poly(2‐ethyl‐2‐oxazoline)s with different end‐groups were calculated. The effect of molar masses on the CCE values was investigated via the survival yield (SY) method and a linear relationship between CCE values and the degree of polymerization for the PEtOx polymers was observed. CONCLUSIONS This study showed that ESI‐MS/MS is very useful for differentiating poly(2‐ethyl‐2‐oxazoline)s with different end‐groups by varying the collision energy. The SY method has the potential to determine the importance of the end‐groups on the fragmentation behavior of this polymer type. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.