Nonionic surfactants are widely used in personal and home care products, in which they may serve as cleaning, wetting, or dispersing agents.  Often, surfactants are not single compounds but blends of homologues. More complexity is introduced by the presence of different end groups and comonomers. The analysis of such systems is substantially facilitated by interfacing mass spectrometry (MS), which disperses based on mass, with an additional level of separation involving interactive liquid chromatography (LC). Here, the potential of ultra-performance LC-MS and tandem mass spectrometry (MS2) with high resolution mass measurement will be illustrated with the complete characterization of a star-branched nonionic surfactant, composed of a methyl glucose core that was chain-extended with poly(ethylene oxide), whose OH end groups were partially esterified with stearic acid (�poly-ethoxylated glucam stearates�).

Interfacing multistage mass spectrometry with liquid chromatography for nonionic surfactant analysis

244th National Meeting (2012)

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