Talk:Flowing-afterglow mass spectrometry

One of the first papers reporting the use of flowing afterglow (FA) was reported in Planet Space Sci in 1966 by Norton, Ferguson, Fehsenfeld, and Schmeltekopf. They studied ion-molecule reactions pertient in the Martian atmosphere. This flowing afterglow replaced the stationary flowing afterglow. The flowing afterglow has many attractive aspects: well-understood laminar, viscous gas flow, a large number density of carrier gas which allows the study of thermalized reactions, and the cabability to make new reactant ions in situ. The ambipolar plasma is sampled using a nosecone and detected using a conventional quadrupole or tandem mass spectrometry, depending on the application. One of the drawbacks of the flowing afterglow is the possiblity of generating multiple reactant ions. This problem was cicumvented by implementing the selected ion flow tube (SIFT).

The flowing afterglow can be used to identify and quantify the VOCs of a sample as long as the fundamental ion chemistry is known. The commonly used ions are H3O+, O2+, and NO+. All ions have drawbacks and advantages. Strategies that have been employed to unequivocally identify the VOCs are to use GC coupled with the FA or to use a complement of reagent ions. Detection limits are typically ppb if there is limited sample or ppt if there is unlimited sample.

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Peer Review: M.P. Hayes
The introduction is a great, brief summary of how FA-MS works. Initially I was picturing GC-MS until I continued reading the introduction. If possible, it may be beneficial to include a diagram of the instrument or a small schematic.

In the history sections, the information is beneficial, but one question that I asked myself was what methods did this replace. It seems at the time of discovery, there may have been other popular methods that were pushed out by this technique. I don’t know if this is the proper place for this bit of information, but it would be nice to include a reference of the impact of this development.

In this section, I see where you mentioned it replaces the stationary afterglow. If there is a Wikipedia page for stationary afterglow, I would link these so people can get a better understanding of what stationary afterglow is. If there is not a link, maybe provided a very brief idea of what it is. In the application section, it may be nice to either include a small image on a spectrum that comes from FA-MS or maybe some sort of table on detection limits per compound as a general representation of the method.

Overall, this article looks really good. You have a good number of references. The images and maybe some comparisons would help tie it together.

Michael.p.hayes (talk) 22:40, 27 March 2017 (UTC)michael.p.hayes