Williams-Pavlantos Kayla, Mokarizadeh Abdol Hadi, Curole Brennan J, Grayson Scott M, Tsige Mesfin, Wesdemiotis Chrys
Department of Chemistry, University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325, USA.
School of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering, University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325, USA.
Polymers (Basel). 2024 Jun 12;16(12):1665. doi: 10.3390/polym16121665.
Polymers have a wide range of applications depending on their composition, size, and architecture. Varying any of these three characteristics can greatly impact the resulting chemical, physical, and mechanical properties. While many techniques are available to determine polymer composition and size, determining the exact polymer architecture is more challenging. Herein, tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) and ion mobility mass spectrometry (IM-MS) methods are utilized to derive crucial architectural information about dithiol-yne comb polymers. Based on their unique fragmentation products and IM drift times, dithiol-yne oligomers with distinct architectures were successfully differentiated and characterized. Additionally, experimental collision cross-sections (Ω) derived via IM-MS were compared to theoretically extracted Ω values from molecular dynamics simulated structures to deduce the architectural motif of these comb oligomers. Overall, this work demonstrates the benefits of combining various mass spectrometry techniques in order to gain a complete understanding of a complex polymer mixture.
聚合物因其组成、尺寸和结构的不同而具有广泛的应用。改变这三个特征中的任何一个都可能极大地影响所得聚合物的化学、物理和机械性能。虽然有许多技术可用于确定聚合物的组成和尺寸，但确定聚合物的确切结构更具挑战性。在此，利用串联质谱（MS/MS）和离子淌度质谱（IM-MS）方法来获取有关二硫醇-炔梳状聚合物的关键结构信息。基于其独特的碎片产物和IM漂移时间，成功区分并表征了具有不同结构的二硫醇-炔低聚物。此外，将通过IM-MS获得的实验碰撞截面（Ω）与从分子动力学模拟结构中理论提取的Ω值进行比较，以推断这些梳状低聚物的结构基序。总体而言，这项工作展示了结合各种质谱技术以全面了解复杂聚合物混合物的优势。
