Verification of the Chemical Weapons Convention: Mass Spectrometry of Alkyl Methylphosphonofluoridates

Abstract

Under the provisions of the United Nations Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), certain parts of chemical industry will be monitored to verify compliance with the Convention. This will include analysis of samples from industrial sites to check for the presence or absence of chemical warfare related compounds. One of the problems in screening the chemicals to be monitored under the CWC is that certain classes of chemical warfare agents are represented as families of chemicals, with many of the individual chemicals having no analytical data available. One example is the alkyl methylphosphonofluoridate family with an alkyl ester substituent from CH₃ to C₁₀H₂₁. In this work, the mass spectra of 60 alkyl methylphosphonofluoridate family members have been studied to enable the development of rapid on-site screening methods for this family of chemicals.