Portable and low cost ambient ionization sources for mass spectrometry are becoming increasingly important as mass analyzers become smaller and more sophisticated. With the use of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG), the charge required to efficiently produce ions can be generated manually and reproducibly without any electrical circuitry. This work showcases the ability to use a triboelectric nanogenerator-based hand-powered power supply to induce electrical charges that form an electrospray from a wooden tip. Previous experiments had shown that DART-MS was successfully able to distinguish and identify the components of multiple classes of falsified artemisinin combination therapy (ACTs) compared to genuines. Experiments performed with TENG-MS show that a simple extraction of those medicines with methanol, along with sliding freestanding (SF) TENG-powered electrospray of material spotted onto a dry wooden toothpick can provide similar detection. Slight variation in the amount of excipients detected in TENG-MS compared to plasma DART-MS was mainly attributed to differences in the analytes extracted by methanol compared to direct solid tablet analysis by DART. Ion generation by TENG wooden-tip electrospray allows for rapid detection of falsified medicines in a safe and low-cost manner, with the added ability to robust ionization in a field operation setting with true fingerprint identification.<br/>

Detection of falsified medicines via triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) mass spectrometry

255th National Meeting (2018)

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