Development of Ambient Mass Spectrometry Rapid Analysis Methods for Trace Inorganics
Ambient mass spectrometry is being investigated as a new method for rapidly characterizing trace inorganic species, including nuclear materials. SRNL is currently developing electrospray ionization (ESI) and paper spray ionization (PSI) methods for mass spectrometry for the detection of trace inorganic compounds JEOL AccuTOF™-DART ® LP 4G mass spectrometer. Sample analysis generates a complex three-dimensional data set with 10 2 -10 3 individual mass spectra spread temporally. To improve the quality and ease of data extraction from this amount of information, a simple data analysis pipeline written in R/R Studio has been improved and expanded upon. Specifically, the software now has header inputs to set base input/output filenames, isotopes of interest, and a list of concentrations analyzed on the instrument. Using list-based structures to enable batch processing of many concentrations at once, it then loads each file, extracts the relevant intensities for masses of interest from each spectrum, and iterates through each concentration to generate graphs of internal standard & analyte correlations, measured isotope ratios, and total ion chromatograms. It then filters the data to remove points at background levels or at the detector saturation limit. Using this filtered data, the pipeline re-creates the graphs to reveal high-quality information from a low-quality raw dataset. All graphs of the R software then output to PowerPoint format. Additionally, faster 3D visualization functionality was added to the pipeline for viewing the entire data file produced by the instrument as an intensity map. With these data analysis tools ready, samples of strontium nitrate/yttrium nitrate as an analyte/internal standard combination were measured on the AccuTOF. From the filtered data, calibration curves were prepared and limits of detection (LOD) of 1 ppb for ESI-MS and 20 ppb for PSI-MS were obtained. The quality available from the calibration curves and the low limits of detection demonstrate the value of the instrument/analysis pipeline system in characterizing trace inorganics.