Graphene coated silica applied for high ionization matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry: A novel approach for environmental and biomolecule analysis

• Introduce free matrix ionization method based on graphene modified silica.
• Enhance the ionization efficiency of graphene for various analytes.
• Ionize the carbohydrate effectively than conventional MALDI-MS.
• Graphene modified silica@CTAB exhibits a great potential to distinguish among different isobaric biomolecules.
• The new method has been applied for surfactant detection.

The integration of nanotechnology with mass spectrometry for sensitive and selective detection of molecules is a hot/important field of research. Synthesis of graphene (G) coated with mesoporous silica (SiO2, G@SiO2) for mass spectrometric application has been demonstrated. For the first time, we proposed the significant role of surfactant that used during the synthesis of mesorporous silicate (SiO2) in mass spectrometry. It was noticed that G could initiate SiO2 via surfactants which work as initiators for further ionization. The porosity of SiO2 trapped the analytes that was released and ionized with the surfactant fragments. Undoubtedly, strong background interferences were present in the case of organic matrix, which greatly obscured the detection of low molecular weight compounds. G@SiO2 nanocomposite affords several advantages, such as the ability to detect small molecules (<500 Da), high sample localization through silica mesoporosity, and high ionization efficiency over than G or conventional matrices. The high performance of G@SiO2 is not only due to the large surface area but also due to high desorption/ionization efficiency of inevitably surfactant (cetyltrimethylammonium chloride, CATB). Unlike the conventional MALDI-MS, the G@SiO2-MS is capable of generating multiply charged polysaccharides. The present method was validated to detect surfactants with low limits of detection.

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