A study of calibrant selection in measurement of carbohydrate and peptide ion-neutral collision cross sections by traveling wave ion mobility spectrometry

While ion-neutral collision cross sections (CCSs) can be directly calculated from drift tube ion mobility spectrometry (DTIMS) data, measurements made using the more recently introduced traveling wave ion mobility spectrometry (TWIMS) technique are usually calibrated using standards with known CCS. Presently, there remains some question regarding how selection of calibrants influences TWIMS CCS measurements. This is of particular concern when calibrants of the same molecular class (e.g., carbohydrate versus peptide) or charge state as the unknowns are unavailable. This report presents a study of calibrant ion influence on CCS determination via TWIMS. Drift times from TWIMS were calibrated to CCSs using either carbohydrates or peptides as standards. These calibrations were then applied to other carbohydrates and peptides with known CCSs, and the errors of the measurements were assessed. In addition, calibrations with standards having charge states either matched or mismatched with those of the target analytes were applied and evaluated for accuracy. The use of carbohydrates to calibrate peptide CCSs and vice versa was found to introduce errors only modestly larger than the inherent uncertainties of the measurements (on average, 1.0%). Charge state mismatching while the same molecular class of calibrant and analyte was maintained yielded larger errors (on average, 3.5%). Mismatching of both calibrant molecular class and charge state resulted in the largest errors (on average, 4.7%). These results suggest that matching of both molecular class and charge state is recommended when possible, while matching at least the charge state is strongly advisable.