Cyclic Organic Peroxides Characterization by Mass Spectrometry and Raman Microscopy

Triacetone triperoxide and hexamethylene triperoxide diamine are among the most used and most studied non-nitro based high explosives. Still, there are other peroxides which do not have reported methods for their detection. Direct Analysis in Real Time is an emerging ambient pressure ionization technique in mass spectrometry MS. This contribution presents the analysis, characterization and detection of triacetone triperoxide TATP and hexamethylene triperoxide diamine HMTD using DART. Although typical experiments are done using helium, adding a small amount of ammonium hydroxide improved the detection limit to 30 ppb.