Since its inception at the beginning of the twentieth century, the field of mass spectrometry has progressed from the realm of physics to an analytical tool that can be found in many fields of science. This is in large part due to continued development and innovation in instrument design. This thesis explores two significant areas of development in mass spectrometry in the last ten years. The first is the development of ambient ionisation techniques. These techniques require little or no sample preparation, and as a result can provide a rapid means of direct analysis. The second development is the commercialisation of ion mobility – mass spectrometry (IM-MS). This technique enables information on the shape of the analyte of interest to be obtained in addition to its mass-to-charge ratio. The technique has the potential to simplify the spectra acquired from complex mixtures and to separate out isobaric species that cannot be resolved by mass spectrometry alone. Both of these developments have been applied to two important areas of analytical science – the characterisation of pharmaceutical commercial products and synthetic polymer formulations. A modification of the extractive electrospray ionisation (EESI) technique has been developed and has been termed thermally assisted – EESI (TA-EESI). TA-EESI and the atmospheric pressure solids analysis probe (ASAP) have been coupled with IMMS. IM-MS has been used as a rapid separation technique to resolve isomeric species within complex polysorbate formulations. Recently introduced novel polymer architectures synthesised by simple methods have been studied using IM-MS experiments.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:575016 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Snelling, Jonathon R. |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/55294/ |
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