N-Phenyl-1,4-Phenylenediamine and Benzidine Oxidation Products Identified Using On-Line Electrochemistry/Electrospray Fourier Transform Mass Spectrometry This manuscript has been authored by a contractor of the U.S. Government under contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. Accordingly, the U.S. Government retains a paid-up, nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this contribution, prepare derivative works, distribute copies to the public, and perform publicly and display publicly, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes

Mass spectrometric methods for monitoring redox processes in electrochemical cells

Electrochemistry (EC) is a mature scientific discipline aimed to study the movement of electrons in an oxidation-reduction reaction. EC covers techniques that use a measurement of potential, charge, or current to determine the concentration or the chemical reactivity of analytes. The electrical signal is directly converted into chemical information. For in-depth characterization of complex electrochemical reactions involving the formation of diverse intermediates, products and byproducts, EC is usually combined with other analytical techniques, and particularly the hyphenation of EC with mass spectrometry (MS) has found broad applicability. The analysis of gases and volatile intermediates and products formed at electrode surfaces is enabled by differential electrochemical mass spectrometry (DEMS). In DEMS an electrochemical cell is sampled with a membrane interface for electron ionization (EI)-MS. The chemical space amenable to EC/MS (i.e., bioorganic molecules including proteins, peptides, nucleic acids, and drugs) was significantly increased by employing electrospray ionization (ESI)-MS. In the simplest setup, the EC of the ESI process is used to analytical advantage. A limitation of this approach is, however, its inability to precisely control the electrochemical potential at the emitter electrode. Thus, particularly for studying mechanistic aspects of electrochemical processes, the hyphenation of discrete electrochemical cells with ESI-MS was found to be more appropriate. The analytical power of EC/ESI-MS can further be increased by integrating liquid chromatography (LC) as an additional dimension of separation. Chromatographic separation was found to be particularly useful to reduce the complexity of the sample submitted either to the EC cell or to ESI-MS. Thus, both EC/LC/ESI-MS and LC/EC/ESI-MS are common.

An electrochemical study of two self-dopable water-soluble aniline derivatives: electrochemical deposition of copolymers

An electrochemical study of two water-soluble aniline derivatives, N-(3-sulfopropyl) aniline (AnPS) and N-(3-sulfopropyl) p-aminodiphenylamine (DAnPS), in aqueous acidic electrolytic solutions containing different kinds of doping anions (Cl (-), SO(4) (2-), and ClO(4) (-)) was carried out. At sufficiently high anodic potential, the sulfonated aniline derivatives undergo oxidation processes yielding cation-radical and dimer intermediates, but no polymer deposition was observed on the working electrode surface. Experimental results showed that both aniline derivatives are electroactive compounds exhibiting redox behaviour in the range of potential of -0.2 V-1.6 V. Due to the self-doping effect induced by sulfonic groups, AnPS and DAnPS compounds have good electroactivity even in neat water solution. By adding a small amount of aniline into electrolytic system, thin layers of copolymers were deposited on the working electrode surface. The copolymer layers formed on the electrodes show a highly orientational and positional order, confirmed by AFM and XRD spectroscopic techniques. During the anodic oxidation processes some distinct colour changes were observed.

Artifacts in amine analysis from anodic oxidation of organic solvents upon electrospray ionization for mass spectrometry

Different phenylenediamines were used to explore anodic oxidation in solution during electrospray ionization (ESI) mass spectrometry analysis. In our experiments, a series of unknown ionic species was detected in the phenylenediamine solutions. Our results propose that reactions of phenylenediamines with species formed by anodic oxidation of typical ESI solvents during the electrospray ionization process such as formaldehyde are producing these peaks. Identification of these compounds inter alia suggests formal alkylation, a reaction not reported so far as a result of electrolytic oxidation in the prospective organic solvents.

Probing cysteine reactivity in proteins by mass spectrometric EC-tagging

The on-line electrochemical tagging (EC-tagging) of cysteine residues in proteins during mass spectrometry is studied to probe the cysteine environment. Benzoquinone probes electrogenerated at a microspray electrode react with the thiol functions of the proteins within a microchannel and the products are analyzed by mass spectrometry. The fundamentals of the technique are discussed, with a focus on the kinetic aspects. The EC-tagging efficiency of the cysteine residues in proteins is used to probe their environment. Experiments with unmodified proteins and their chemically reduced forms highlight the strong effect of the cysteine site reactivity on the tagging efficiencies. This study highlights relevant parameters for such on-line electrochemical derivatization/MS detection strategies.

Benzidine photodegradation: a mass spectrometry and UV spectroscopy combined study

The benzidine photodegradation process was studied using UV/Vis spectroscopy and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) combined with collision-induced dissociation (CID) and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). Mass spectrometry was used to characterize benzidine and to identify and characterize possible degradation products and intermediates. The MS data showed that benzidine is quite persistent in aqueous medium. Moreover, the MS analysis enabled us to propose the following three degradation products/intermediates: 4'-nitro-4-biphenylamine, tetrahydroxybiphenyl and 4,4'-dinitrobiphenyl. For the benzidine molecular ion and protonated molecule and for the protonated molecules of the degradation products/intermediates detected, fragmentation patterns are proposed based on CID and MS/MS data. For the photodegradation process different catalysts were used, namely the commercial TiO2 Degussa P25, and the laboratory-prepared ZnO, TiO2 anatase and a titanium-zinc oxide with a perovskite type structure. Comparison of the different catalysts showed that degradation was favoured with the commercial TiO2. Nevertheless, the other catalysts appear to be promising and economic alternatives for potential future remediation studies.