Ondrej Šedo, Milan Alberti, Jan Janča, Josef Havel

Laser desorption–ionization time of flight mass spectrometry of various carbon materials

Carbon 44 (2006) 840–847

The possibilities of commercially available MALDI-TOF mass spectrometric instrumentation equipped with 337 nm nitrogen laser in carbon materials analysis have been examined. Laser desorption–ionization of synthetic diamond, graphite, glassy carbon, carbon nanotubes, and diamond-like thin layer results in the formation of two positively charged (C⁺_n; n = 1–31 and odd-numbered 44–346) and one negatively charged carbon cluster set (C^-_n; n = 1–19). Fullerene C₆₀ was analyzed for comparison. From the C⁺_n clusters mass spectra, several similarities, concerning "magic number" ions with high signal intensities, can be observed. It is concluded that differing carbon materials are subjected by UV-laser pulses to similar physico-chemical changes. Heavy carbon clusters of low stability and characteristic loss of neutral C₃ particle in case of the smaller clusters during post-source decay (PSD) implies that the species observed do not possess stable fullerene structure, which might have been expected for C_n species with n ≤ 20.

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Cited Articles

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