Molecular Structure Characterization of Micro/Nanoplastics by 193 nm Ultraviolet Photodissociation Mass Spectrometry.
Shiwen LiuZheyi LiuHeng ZhaoYongjie GuoYaolu MaLingqiang ZhouYanxia QiQiancheng ZhaoChunlei XiaoXueming YangFang-Jun WangPublished in: Analytical chemistry (2023)
The degradation of macroplastics results in micro/nanoplastics (MNPs) in the natural environment, inducing high health risks worldwide. It remains challenging to characterize the accurate molecular structures of MNPs. Herein, we integrate 193 nm ultraviolet photodissociation (UVPD) with mass spectrometry to interrogate the molecular structures of poly(ethylene glycol) terephthalate and polyamide (PA) MNPs. The backbones of the MNP polymer can be efficiently dissociated by UVPD, producing rich types of fragment ions. Compared to high-energy collision dissociation (HCD), the structural informative fragment ions and corresponding sequence coverages obtained by UVPD were all improved 2.3 times on average, resulting in almost complete sequence coverage and precise structural interrogation of MNPs. We successfully determine the backbone connectivity differences of MNP analogues PA6, PA66, and PA610 by improving the average sequence coverage from 26.8% by HCD to 89.4% by UVPD. Our results highlight the potential of UVPD in characterizing and discriminating backbone connectivity and chain end structures of different types of MNPs.
Keyphrases
- high resolution
- mass spectrometry
- liquid chromatography
- resting state
- functional connectivity
- photodynamic therapy
- white matter
- quantum dots
- single molecule
- gas chromatography
- amino acid
- multiple sclerosis
- healthcare
- high performance liquid chromatography
- capillary electrophoresis
- molecular docking
- light emitting
- water soluble
- aqueous solution