Electrospray Ionization-Mass Spectrometry and Ion Mobility Spectrometry Analysis of Ammonium Nitrate/Urea Nitrate

Analysis of Ammonium Nitrate/Urea Nitrate with Crown Ethers and Sugars as Modifiers by Electrospray Ionization-Mass Spectrometry and Ion Mobility Spectrometry

Keywords:

improvised explosive devices, IEDs, ion mobility, ion mobility spectrometry, high performance ion mobility spectrometry, ESI, Electrospray Ionozation, IMS-MS, Ion mobility mass spectrometry, Analysis of Homemade Explosives, Threat detection

Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) Detection by ESI-HPIMS

Improvised Explosive Device Analysis with ESI-HPIMS Ammonium nitrate (AN) and urea nitrate (UN) are commonly used materials in improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Detection by mass spectrometry (MS) and/or ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) is traditionally difficult, due to their ionic nature and their low mass (for MS detection) and size (for IMS detection); detection of AN/UN using cluster ions poses difficulty at trace levels because their formation is concentration-dependent. The addition of modifiers to the ESI process is demonstrated here to overcome some of these challenges for the detection of AN and UN using MS and/or IMS.