Mass Spectrometry
Online ISSN : 2186-5116
Print ISSN : 2187-137X
ISSN-L : 2186-5116
Original Article
Multi-stage Mass Spectrometry of Poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) and Its Vinyl Succinimide Copolymer Formed upon Exposure to Sodium Hypochlorite
Thierry Fouquet Masaki TorimuraHiroaki Sato
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2016 Volume 5 Issue 1 Pages A0050

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Abstract

The degradation routes of poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) exposed to sodium hypochlorite (bleach) have been previously investigated using chemical analyses such as infrared spectroscopy. So far, no reports have proposed mass spectrometry (MS) as an alternative tool despite its capability to provide molecular and structural information using its single stage electrospray (ESI) or matrix assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) and multi stage (MSn) configurations, respectively. The present study thus reports on the characterization of PVP after its exposure to bleach by high resolution MALDI spiralTOF-MS and Kendrick mass defect analysis providing clues as to the formation of a vinyl pyrrolidone/vinyl succinimide copolymeric degradation product. A thorough investigation of the fragmentation pathways of PVP adducted with sodium and proton allows one main route to be described—namely the release of the pyrrolidone pendant group in a charge remote and charge driven mechanism, respectively. Extrapolating this fragmentation pathway, the oxidation of vinyl pyrrolidone into vinyl succinimide hypothesized from the single stage MS is validated by the detection of an alternative succinimide neutral loss in lieu of the pyrrolidone release in the ESI-MSn spectra of the aged PVP sample. It constitutes an example of application of multi-stage mass spectrometry for the characterization of the degradation of polymeric samples at a molecular level.

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© 2016 Thierry Fouquet, Masaki Torimura, and Hiroaki Sato. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
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