Dielectric Barrier Discharge Ionization of Perfluorinated Compounds

The soft ionization ability based on plasma-jet protonation of molecules initiated by a dielectric barrier discharge ionization source (DBDI) is certainly an interesting application for analytical chemistry. Since the change of an applied sinusoidal voltage may lead to different discharge modes the applied discharge was powered by a square wave generator in order to get a homogeneous plasma. It is known that besides the protonation [M+H]+ of unpolar as well as some polar molecules the homogeneous DBDI can be used to ionize molecules directly [M]+. Here we prove that the DBDI can be applied to exchange fluorine by oxygen of perfluorinated compounds (PFC). PFC are organofluorine compounds with carbon–fluorine and carbon–carbon bonds only but no carbon–hydrogen bonds. While the position of the introduction into the plasma-jet is essential, PFC can be measured in the negative mass spectrometer (MS) mode.