TY - JOUR
T1 - Elucidating the structure of carbon nanoparticles by ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionisation quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry
AU - Hu, Qin
AU - Meng, Xiangpeng
AU - Choi, Martin M.F.
AU - Gong, Xiaojuan
AU - Chan, Wan
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for a Startup Funding ( R9310 ). We express our sincere thanks to the Provost Office of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for providing a Post-Doctoral Fellowship to Qin Hu.
PY - 2016/3/10
Y1 - 2016/3/10
N2 - A fast and accurate ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionisation quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-ESI-Q-TOF-MS/MS) method was developed for the separation and structural elucidation of fluorescent carbon nanoparticles (CNP). The CNP was synthesised from microwave-assisted pyrolysis of citric acid (CA) and 1,2-ethylenediamine (EDA). By using UPLC separation, the CNP product was well separated into ten fractions within 4.0 min. Based on high-accuracy MS and MS/MS analyses, the CNP species were revealed to display six kinds of chemical formulas, including (C10H20N4O5)n, (C8H12N2O5)n, (C16H22N4O9)n, (C6H8O7)n, (C14H18N2O11)n, and (C14H16N2O10)n. In particular, our study revealed for the first time that the CNP species exist as supramolecular clusters with their individual monomers units linked together through non-covalent bonding forces. These findings clearly indicated the usefulness of UPLC-ESI-Q-TOF-MS/MS in identifying the chemical composition of CNP product. It is anticipated that our proposed methodology can be applied to study the structure-property relationships of CNP, facilitating in the production of CNP with desirable spectral features.
AB - A fast and accurate ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionisation quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-ESI-Q-TOF-MS/MS) method was developed for the separation and structural elucidation of fluorescent carbon nanoparticles (CNP). The CNP was synthesised from microwave-assisted pyrolysis of citric acid (CA) and 1,2-ethylenediamine (EDA). By using UPLC separation, the CNP product was well separated into ten fractions within 4.0 min. Based on high-accuracy MS and MS/MS analyses, the CNP species were revealed to display six kinds of chemical formulas, including (C10H20N4O5)n, (C8H12N2O5)n, (C16H22N4O9)n, (C6H8O7)n, (C14H18N2O11)n, and (C14H16N2O10)n. In particular, our study revealed for the first time that the CNP species exist as supramolecular clusters with their individual monomers units linked together through non-covalent bonding forces. These findings clearly indicated the usefulness of UPLC-ESI-Q-TOF-MS/MS in identifying the chemical composition of CNP product. It is anticipated that our proposed methodology can be applied to study the structure-property relationships of CNP, facilitating in the production of CNP with desirable spectral features.
KW - Carbon nanoparticles
KW - ESI-Q-TOF-MS/MS
KW - Non-covalent supramolecular clusters
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84961286908&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.aca.2016.01.034
DO - 10.1016/j.aca.2016.01.034
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:84961286908
SN - 0003-2670
VL - 911
SP - 100
EP - 107
JO - Analytica Chimica Acta
JF - Analytica Chimica Acta
ER -