Applications of high-resolution electrospray ionization mass spectrometry to measurements of average oxygen to carbon ratios in secondary organic aerosols

The applicability of high-resolution electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (HR ESI-MS) to measurements of the average oxygen to carbon ratio (O/C) in secondary organic aerosols (SOAs) was investigated. Solutions with known average O/C containing up to 10 standard compounds representative of low-molecular-weight SOA constituents were analyzed and the corresponding electrospray ionization efficiencies were quantified. The assumption of equal ionization efficiency commonly used in estimating O/C ratios of SOAs was found to be reasonably accurate. We found that the accuracy of the measured O/C ratios increases by averaging the values obtained from both the posive and negative modes. A correlation was found between the ratio of the ionization efficiencies in the positive (+) and negative (-) ESI modes and the octanol-water partition constant and, more importantly, the compound's O/C. To demonstrate the utility of this correlation for estimating average O/C values of unknown mixtures, we analyzed the ESI (+) and ESI (-) data for SOAs produced by oxidation of limonene and isoprene and compared them online to O/C measurements using an aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS). This work demonstrates that the accuracy of the HR ESI-MS method is comparable to that of the AMS with the added benefit of molecular identification of the aerosol constituents.