Fiber analysis by thermal desorption/pyrolysis DART®
Introduction
Analyzing fiber samples has always been difficult by DART®. The problem has been that there is no easy way to hold the fiber in the gas stream without losing it into the vacuum system. A fiber can be secured in the DART gas stream with forceps or other means, but if the DART gas is too hot, the fiber can break off and be lost into the mass spectrometer vacuum system through the atmospheric pressure interface.
A thermal desorption/pyrolysis stage (The Biochromato, Inc. “ionRocket™”) designed for use with DART produces highly reproducible thermal desorption profiles that show outgassing, additives, and high-quality pyrolysis DART mass spectra for materials. Because fiber samples placed in the disposable copper sample “pots” are not positioned directly in the DART gas stream, a single fiber can be analyzed without risk of loss into the vacuum system.
Experimental
Mass spectra were acquired by using a JEOL AccuTOF™-DART® 4G mass spectrometer (Figure 1) equipped with a Biochromato, Inc. ionRocket thermal desorption and pyrolysis system (http:// biochromato.com/ionrocket/).