Optimization of two-stage thermal desorption combined with pentafluorophenyl hydrazine derivatization-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry analytical method of atmospheric carbonyl compounds

•A two-step thermal desorption system combined with GC/MS was developed to collect carbonyl by adsorption derivatization of PFPH.•The use of TD improves the detection sensitivity, eliminates the use of solvents and complex sample pretreatment steps, and enables the analysis of the whole sample.•At low sample concentrations, the two-stage TD-GC/MS method has a low method detection limit.