Mass spectrometric behavior of levoglucosan under different ionization conditions and implications for studies of cellulose pyrolysis

Pyrolysis-mass spectrometric studies of cellulose indicate low abundances of levoglucosan in the product spectrum compared to the yield values determined in more conventional types of pyrolysis studies. To examine the reason for these conflicting observation, levoglucosan was examined under different ion source conditions and ionization modes to ascertain the relative contributions of thermal degradation and ionization fragmention to the low abundances of the levoglucosan molecular ion. Low-energy electron ionization using conventional sample volatilization and molecular-beam sampling is compared to chemical ionization using methane, isobutane, and ammonia as reagent gases, and to field ionization and desorption. The mass spectrometric fragmentation patterns under the various systems indicate that studies of cellulose pyrolysis underestimate the amount of levoglucosan formed due to ionization fragmentation and thermal rearrangement reactions in the ion source. Several peaks, including m/z 126 and 144, are dominated by the contribution from the fragmentation of levoglucosan.