Folding mass spectra: how to deal with the signal to noise dilemma

Abstract

A method to exploit the periodic information stored in polymer mass spectra for increasing the obtainable S/N ratio is presented. This method allows ‘folding’ of a spectrum into a single monomer repeat unit. The advantages of this procedure are an improved S/N, automatic averaging of all peaks for a better quantitative analysis of individual polymer end groups and an overall gain in time resolution for in situ experiments. The Python code for the processing of data is described and provided.