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Updated: Sep 15, 2025

Characterization of Synthetic Polymers via Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization Time of Flight MALDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry
Published on: June 10, 2018
Advanced Polymer Characterization: Modular Operations for Spectral Alignment by Iterative Compression (MOSAIC)
Hanlin M Wang1,2, Benjamin A Suslick1,3, David J Lundberg4
1Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, United States.
Abstract:
Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry encodes structural information across diverse homo- and copolymer ensembles, yet decrypting these spectra requires a systematic analytical approach. We introduce Modular Operations for Spectral Alignment by Iterative Compression (MOSAIC)─a general cipher algorithm that applies modular arithmetic to filter monomer-derived mass contributions and cluster MALDI peaks by nonconstitutional repeating units (non-CRUs). MOSAIC performs sequential modular operations using monomer mass differences as base units to compress complex spectral data, revealing end-group distributions and comonomer incorporation. As a demonstration, we applied MOSAIC to five copolymers formed by two different polymerization mechanisms. The resulting remainder-mass plots clearly resolve polymer homologs with distinct non-CRUs into visually apparent clusters, enabling intuitive assignment of mass spectral features.
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