Electrospray ionization of volatiles in breath

Recent work by Zenobi and colleagues [H. Chen, A. Wortmann, W. Zhang, R. Zenobi, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 46 (2007) 580] reports that human breath charged by contact with an electrospray (ES) cloud yields many mass peaks of species such as urea, glucose, and other ions, some with molecular weights above 1000 Da. All these species are presumed to be involatile, and to originate from breath aerosols by so-called extractive electrospray ionization EESI [H. Chen, A. Venter, R.G. Cooks, Chem. Commun. (2006) 2042]. However, prior work by Fenn and colleagues [C.M. Whitehouse, F. Levin, C.K. Meng, J.B. Fenn, Proceedings of the 34th ASMS Conference on Mass Spectrometry and Allied Topics, Denver, 1986 p. 507; S. Fuerstenau, P. Kiselev, J.B. Fenn, Proceedings of the 47th ASMS Conference on Mass Spectrometry, 1999, Dallas, TX, 1999] and by Hill and colleagues [C. Wu, W.F. Siems, H.H. Hill Jr., Anal. Chem. 72 (2000) 396] have reported the ability of electrospray drops to ionize a variety of low vapor pressure substances directly from the gas phase, without an apparent need for the vapor to be brought into the charging ES in aerosol form. The Ph.D. Thesis of Martínez-Lozano [P. Martínez-Lozano Sinués, Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Thermal and Fluid Engineering, University Carlos III of Madrid; April 5, 2006 (in Spanish); http://hdl.handle.net/10016/655] had also previously argued that the numerous human breath species observed via a similar ES ionization approach were in fact ionized directly from the vapor. Here, we observe that passage of the breath stream through a submicron filter does not eliminate the majority of the breath vapors seen in the absence of the filter. We conclude that direct vapor charging is the leading mechanism in breath ionization by electrospray drops, though aerosol ionization may also play a role.