Principles and Practices of Polymer Mass Spectrometry helps readers acquire the skills necessary for selecting the optimal methods, handling samples, analyzing the data, and interpreting the results of the mass spectrometry of polymers. This guide describes the principles of polymer MS and best practices in polymer characterization. It discusses different approaches, including MALDI, ESI, TOF MS, and FT-MS. It provides a guide to developing appropriate sample preparation protocols for different polymers. Complete with examples of applications and experiments, this is an excellent reference for scientists, researchers, graduate students, and others.

p>Liang Li, PhD, is a Professor of Chemistry and a Canada Research Chair in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Alberta. He is an Editor of Analytical Chimica Acta and a member of the Advisory Boards for the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, Canadian Journal of Chemistry, and Current Analytical Chemistry.

Preface.
Contributors.
1. Overview of MS and MALDI MS for polymer analysis.
2. Ionization Processes and Detection in MALDI-MS of Polymers.
3. Time-of-flight MS for polymer characterization.
4. Polymer analysis with Fourier Transform mass spectrometry.
5. Tandem MS and polymer ion dissociation.
6. Conventional MALDI sample preparation.
7. Solvent-free MALDI sample preparation.
8. MALDI MS for the quantitative determination of polymer molecular mass distribution.
9. New approaches to data reduction in MS.
10. MALDI MS/MS for polymer structure and composition analysis.
11. LC-MALDI MS for polymer characterization.
12. MALDI MS applications for industrial polymers.