A sensitive gas chromatography detector based on atmospheric pressure chemical ionization by a dielectric barrier discharge

Abstract

In this work, we present a novel concept for a gas chromatography detector utilizing an atmospheric pressure chemical ionization which is initialized by a dielectric barrier discharge. In general, such a detector can be simple and low-cost, while achieving extremely good limits of detection. However, it is non-selective apart from the use of chemical dopants. Here, a demonstrator manufactured entirely from fused silica capillaries and printed circuit boards is shown. It has a size of 75×60×25mm and utilizes only 2W of power in total. Unlike other known discharge detectors, which require high-purity helium, this detector can theoretically be operated using any gas able to form stable ion species. Here, purified air is used. With this setup, limits of detection in the low parts-per-billion range have been obtained for acetone.

Application of chromatographic techniques in the analysis of total nitrosamines in water

“…GC-MS technique explains the abundance of molecular composition and the amount of analyte in the sample in relation to the peak area [45,64]. Its sensitivity is based on the mass of analyte received at the detector [64,65]. Because of sensitivity and selectivity, it is used in the selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode for the analysis of thermally stable, semi-volatile, less polar and low molecular weight nitrosamines [23,45,51,65,66].…”

“…Its sensitivity is based on the mass of analyte received at the detector [64,65]. Because of sensitivity and selectivity, it is used in the selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode for the analysis of thermally stable, semi-volatile, less polar and low molecular weight nitrosamines [23,45,51,65,66]. The study of nitrosamine has been narrowed to the US EPA eight semi-volatile nitrosamine analysis (Method 521) and less attention is given to the non-volatile nitrosamines.…”

Investigating the performance characteristics of the barrier discharge ionization detector and comparison to the flame ionization detector for the gas chromatographic analysis of volatile and semivolatile organic compounds

“…Only more recently, analytical and spectroscopic applications have become more abundant, and the DBD has been used in a number of analytical and spectroscopic applications (Guo et al 2015;Sch€ utz et al 2015) Typical applications of the DBD in spectroscopy are as an atomization (Straka et al 2018;Kratzer et al 2018), excitation (Brandt et al 2016), and ionization source (Hagenhoff and Hayen 2018;Huba, Mirabelli, and Zenobi 2018). The DBD has also been incorporated as ionization source in some GC detectors, e.g., as GC photoionization detector on a chip (Zhu et al 2016) and as an atmospheric pressure ionization detector providing detection in the low parts per billion range (Kirk, Last, and Zimmermann 2017). The combination of the DBD with miniaturized photodiode array detection has been reported particularly for element-specific detection in a number of applications (Li et al 2011;Han et al 2014;Li, Jiang, and Hou 2015;Jiang et al 2015).…”