Chemical attribution of the home-made explosive ETN - Part I: Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis of partially nitrated erythritol impurities.

Erythritol tetranitrate (ETN) was prepared independently by two research groups from the USA and the Netherlands. The partially nitrated impurities present in ETN were studied using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry to address the ultimate challenge in forensic explosives investigations, i.e.

Development and validation of highly selective screening and confirmatory methods for the qualitative forensic analysis of organic explosive compounds with high performance liquid chromatography coupled with (photodiode array and) LTQ ion trap/Orbitrap mass spectrometric detections (HPLC-(PDA)-LTQOrbitrap).

An LTQ-Orbitrap FTMS is a new (hybrid) mass spectrometric (MS) analyzer. It allows for the acquisition of full scan MS(n) (n-stage fragmentations, n=1-n) spectra with the linear ion trap detector (LTQ) at high speed and/or with the Fourier Transform-detector (Orbitrap) with ultra high mass resolution (>60,000 at m/z<400amu) and high mass accuracy (≤1ppm with internal calibration). In addition it may be coupled with liquid chromatography (LC) with photo diode array (PDA) detection.

Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) profiling in post-explosion residues to constitute evidence of crime-scene presence.

Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) and its degradation products are analyzed to discriminate between residues originating from PETN explosions and residues obtained under other circumstances, such as natural degradation on textile, or after handling intact PETN. The degradation products observed in post-explosion samples were identified using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry as the less-nitrated analogues of PETN: pentaerythritol trinitrate (PETriN), pentaerythritol dinitrate (PEDiN) and pentaerythritol mononitrate (PEMN). Significant levels of these degradation products were observed in post-explosion samples, whereas only very low levels were detected in a variety of intact PETN samples and naturally degraded PETN.