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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Jun 15.
Published in final edited form as: Environ Sci Technol. 2022 Feb 17;56(6):3441–3451. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.1c06483

Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Ion mobility spectrometry capabilities. (A) PFAS detected in pine needles from multiple previous studies. (B) Breakdown of the 75 PFAS detected in the pine needles, 61 of which were confidently annotated (level 1 based on the Metabolomics Standards Initiative criteria)41,42 using an LC-IMS-MS spectral library built from >100 PFAS standards. (C) Chromatographic separation of linear PFOS (L-PFOS) from methylated (m-PFOS) and dimethylated isomers (dm-PFOS). The spectra in D and E were extracted from the colored, latest eluting peak containing L-PFOS, the methylated isomer P1MHpS, and the mass-labeled PFOS internal standard (13C8–PFOS). (D) Separation of PFAS from hydrocarbon-based biomolecules (e.g., lipids) in the IMS drift time dimension clearly distinguishes the different molecule types with similar m/z values. (E) Zoom-in of D showing the IMS drift time separation of L-PFOS (pink) and its coeluting constitutional isomer P1MHpS (orange), as well as the IMS drift-alignment of linear PFOS and the mass-labeled linear PFOS internal standard 13C8-PFOS (green).