Desorption corona beam ionisation (DCBI) mass spectrometry for in-situ analysis of adsorbed phenol in cigarette acetate fiber filter.

The study of spatial distribution characteristics of the adsorbed compounds for absorbent materials has significant importance in understanding the behaviors of aerosols while they migrating in the absorbent materials. Herein, for the first time, desorption corona beam ionization-mass spectrometry (DCBI-MS) has proposed for direct in-situ analysis of adsorbed aerosol for absorbent materials. DCBI is a novel atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI)-related technique developed by our group in recent years. It can facilitate accurately localizing sampling by forming a visible thin corona beam and avoid the risk of sample contamination and matrix interference compared with other similar techniques. The advantages of DCBI-MS allow rapid screening of the spatial distribution characteristics of the adsorbed compounds for absorbent materials. The distribution characteristic of phenol in cigarette filter tip filled with cellulose acetate fiber was studied as a model case for demonstrating the feasibility of the developed method. As a comparison, conventional HPLC was also used for the study of the distribution characteristic of phenol. The results revealed DCBI-MS had highly improved assay simplicity in spatial distribution characteristic analysis of phenol for the acetate fiber tip, therefore, exhibiting a great potential for convenient, rapid and cost-efficient analysis of the spatial distribution characteristic investigation of adsorbed compounds for adsorbent materials.