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Updated: May 15, 2026

Rapid High-throughput Species Identification of Botanical Material Using Direct Analysis in Real Time High Resolution Mass Spectrometry
Published on: October 2, 2016
Argon direct analysis in real time mass spectrometry in conjunction with makeup solvents: a method for analysis of
Hongmei Yang1, Debin Wan, Fengrui Song
1Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 5625 Renmin Street, Changchun 130022, China.
Abstract:
Helium direct analysis in real time (He-DART) mass spectrometry (MS) analysis of labile compounds usually tends to be challenging because of the occurrence of prominent fragmentation, which obscures the assigning of an ion to an independent species or merely a fragment in a mixture. In the present work, argon DART (Ar-DART) MS in conjunction with makeup solvents has been demonstrated to analyze a variety of labile compounds including nucleosides, alkaloids, glucose, and other small molecules. The results presented here confirm that Ar-DART can generate significantly less energetic ions than conventional He-DART and is able to produce the intact molecular ions with little or no fragmentation in both positive and negative ion modes. Adding a makeup solvent (absolute ethyl alcohol, methanol, fluorobenzene, or acetone) to the argon gas stream at the exit of the DART ion source can result in 1-2 orders of magnitude increase in detection signals. The sensitivity attainable by Ar-DART was found to be comparable to that by He-DART. The investigation of influence of solvents improves our understanding of the fundamental desorption and ionization processes in DART. The practical application of this rapid and high throughput method is demonstrated by the successful analysis of a natural product (Crude Kusnezoff Monkshood) extract, demonstrating the great potential in mixture research.
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