Ammonia-Assisted Proton Transfer Reaction Mass Spectrometry for Detecting Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP) Explosive

In the present work, a novel method of changing reagent ions, ammonia-assisted PTR-MS, was developed. Through an injection port bypass, ammonia was injected into a homemade PTR-MS device.

A conventional PTR-MS apparatus with reagent ions H3O+ (H2O)n (n = 0, 1, 2) can be converted to an ammonia-assisted PTR-MS with reagent ions NH4 + .The new method was introduced to detect triacetone triperoxide (TATP) explosive material. Results showed that the sensitivity is enhanced more than 37 times compared with TATP detection using conventional PTR-MS and the limit of detection (LOD) could reach 1.3 ppb. TATP in real complex matrixes can also be detected successfully using this method.