Browsing by Author "Tsai, Chen-Yeh"

Sugar and Sugar alcohol are indicative compounds in the environmental aerosol which make them really important. The concentration of sugar and sugar alcohol reveal biogenic and anthropogenic information such as climate, air quality, wood consumption, the activity of plantation and pollution. The conventional analysis methods of sugar and sugar alcohol are reverse phase High Performance Liquid Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS), and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS/MS). However, both of them have some limitations due to the sugar and sugar alcohol aerosol sample which are not easy to analyze. For reverse phase HPLC-MS/MS, the separation of analytes is not satisfied. For the GC-MS/MS, the derivatization process requires extra work and the derivatization compound is not stable. Besides, the matrix effect from the aerosol sample is a significant challenge which needs to be solved. Hence, the hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) and the Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) are introduced. The retention factors of HILIC column are the hydrophilic partition, the hydrogen bonding, and the electrostatic interactions. Polar stationary phase is used in HILIC mode, and the highly organic solvent is employed in mobile phase. Hence, a stagnant aqueous-rich layer is generated in HILIC mode, which can separate sugars and sugar alcohol efficiently. Furthermore, the interference and the matrix effect are solved by SPE. The development and the optimization of SPE-HILIC-MS/MS method for sugars were done in the experimental part. Eventually, the real environmental aerosol was analyzed by the optimized parameters and methods. The sugars and sugar alcohols were analyzed successfully from atmospheric aerosol samples.