Application example of a novel untargeted LC-UHRMS processing approach for the analysis of organic aerosols

Atmospheric organic aerosol contains unique information about the origin, reaction regimes and the atmospheric conditions of the air mass that is sampled. Extracting the maximum amount of information from every sample can be a challenging task. Traditional targeted analysis of a few selected compounds is not up to the task. Therefore, untargeted analysis is becoming increasingly popular for analyzing complex atmospheric aerosol samples.

This poster presents an in-house developed specialized software that allows to analyze full-scan / AIF MS measurements that were previously too complex for direct human interpretation. In contrast to traditional measurements, this mode provides the maximum amount of information about the sample without any unnecessary restrictions, allowing to create digital databases of complete organic aerosol samples. With continuous improvement of the analysis program, this allows to utilize data of samples that were measured today to be used in the future for other projects and to be analyzed with different methods and programs. The custom software can convert such full-scan / AIF LC-UHRMS data into a human readable format and visualize the data in a comprehensive way. Utilizing this approach allows to capture the maximum amount of data in a single measurement reducing both manual labor and device utilization.