ELECTROSPRAY MASS-SPECTROMETRY - ETHYLENE-GLYCOL AS A SOLVENT AND ITS EFFECTS ON ION DESORPTION

Ethylene glycol solutions of gramicidin S, myoglobin and tetrabutylammonium bromide were analysed by means of electrospray mass spectrometry and their spectra were compared with those of aqueous solutions. The evaporation of water and ethylene glycol droplets, initially at room or elevated temperature, in air at room temperature was modelled. It was found that under conditions where a water droplet's radius would shrink by approximately 30%, an ethylene glycol droplet shrinks negligibly. Further, droplets that are initially hot (such as those that are ejected from a heated electrospray needle) cool very rapidly owing to evaporation and heat loss to ambient air, and subsequently evaporate much like droplets that are initially at room temperature. For gramicidin S, the ion abundances in ethylene glycol as solvent were approximately 200 times lower than those in water under room temperature operating conditions. In experiments where the spray probe was heated to approximately 100-degrees-C to reduce the viscosity of ethylene glycol, the gramicidin response difference between the solvents decreased to about a factor of 40. Similar trends were observed for myoglobin and the tetrabutylammonium ion. The gramicidin abundances in ethylene glycol, relative to those in water, are orders of magnitude too large to be accounted for using the conventional solvent evaporation model. It is speculated that decreasing the viscosity increases the velocity of ions drifting in ethylene glycol towards the solution/air interface and increases the total number of analyte ions desorbed at the Taylor cone during electrospray.