Secondary Electrospray Ionization-Ion Mobility Spectrometry for Explosive Vapor Detection

Keywords:

Secondary electrospray ionization, SESI. ion mobility, ion mobility spectrometry, high performance ion mobility spectrometry, ESI, Electrospray Ionization, IMS-MS, Ion mobility mass spectrometry, Analysis of Homemade Explosives, Threat detection, Analysis of explosives, explosive vapor detection

Explosive Vapor Detection

Secondary electrospray ionization (SESI), a nonradioactive ionization source, was investigated to detect three common military explosives: RDX, nitroglycerin, and PETN. In addition, the concept of doping the ionization source with nonvolatile adduct-forming agents was investigated and described for the first time. For RDX, in addition to a lower detection limit, the nonvolatile nitrate dopant also produced a greater response sensitivity and a higher limit of linearity than did the traditional volatile chloride dopant.