Rapid characterization of perfluoralkyl carboxylate, sulfonate, and sulfonamide isomers by high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.

A rapid (<23 min) new HPLC-MS/MS method was developed for simultaneous characterization of 24 per- and polyfluoroalkyl compounds in landfill leachate. In addition to isomer-specific analysis of perfluorooctane sulfonate and perfluorooctanoate, branched from linear isomer separation was accomplished for C6 and C10 perfluoroalkyl sulfonates, C6, C7 and C9-C11 perfluoroalkyl carboxylates, perfluorooctane sulfonamide and, for the first time, 3 perfluorooctane sulfonamidoacetates. The method utilizes a fused-core pentafluorophenylpropyl (PFP) stationary phase and is approximately 4 times faster than previous comprehensive isomer-specific HPLC-MS/MS methods. This is the first isomer-specific methodology which can be adopted for routine analysis without sacrificing throughput from lengthy run times or limited target lists.