Analysis of a five-component mixture of polymer additives by means of high energy mass spectrometry and tandem mass spectrometry

High energy mass spectrometry and tandem mass spectrometry have been employed to analyse a five-component mixture of common organic polymer additives (300 - 1200 daltons). The experiments were performed by means of a four-sector instrument and a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. Field desorption was a good ionization method for the generation of molecular weight information from the polymer additives. High energy collision induced dissociation (CID) was found to be more applicable than low energy CID to the structural determination of polymer additives, as characteristic ions were observed in the spectra by means of the former method. Mechanisms have been proposed for the generation of some of the fragment ions observed in the high energy CID spectra.