Spectroscopy E-Books
Effluents from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are a major source of contamination by pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in the environment. The presence of low levels of PPCPs in surface and drinking water sources raises public concern because of the potential detrimental ecological effects of these contaminants. Because of these concerns, scientists and engineers have been interested in detecting PPCPs in water to evaluate their fate and transport in the environment, as well as monitor their transformation and degradation at WWTPs. Liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (LC–MS) has been the method of choice for separation and detection of PPCPs, because PPCPs are highly soluble in water and have low volatility. The majority of LC–MS methods use electrospray ionization either in positive or negative mode, with an acidic or basic mobile phase, respectively. As an alternative, this article presents the use of “wrong-way-round ionization” in electrospray mass spectrometry, where protonation of neutral or weakly basic molecules occurs in a strongly basic mobile phase in LC–MS. When “wrong-way-round ionization” was employed in LC–MS for the analysis of PPCPs in wastewater samples, increased signal intensities, by at least an order of magnitude, were observed in PPCPs with diverse polarity and acidic properties.
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Improving Fluorescence and Raman Techniques for Environmental Microplastic Analysis
March 31st 2025A recent study conducted at the LaserLaB Amsterdam and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (the Netherlands) explored spectroscopic imaging techniques, including Raman and fluorescence microscopy, for characterizing microplastics (MPs), focusing on optimizing sample preparation, particularly density separation, and Nile Red staining.Spectroscopy spoke to Merel Konings, corresponding author of the paper resulting from the study, about her work
New Study Provides Insights into Chiral Smectic Phases
March 31st 2025Researchers from the Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences have unveiled new insights into the molecular arrangement of the 7HH6 compound’s smectic phases using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and infrared (IR) spectroscopy.