Gas phase ion chemistry is a field of science encompassed within both chemistry and physics. It is the science that studies ions and molecules in the gas phase, most often enabled by some form of mass spectrometry. By far the most important applications for this science is in studying the thermodynamics and kinetics of reactions. [1] [2] For example, one application is in studying the thermodynamics of the solvation of ions. Ions with small solvation spheres of 1, 2, 3... solvent molecules can be studied in the gas phase and then extrapolated to bulk solution.
Transition state theory is the theory of the rates of elementary reactions which assumes a special type of chemical equilibrium (quasi-equilibrium) between reactants and activated complexes. [3]
RRKM theory is used to compute simple estimates of the unimolecular ion decomposition reaction rates from a few characteristics of the potential energy surface.
The process of converting an atom or molecule into an ion by adding or removing charged particles such as electrons or other ions can occur in the gas phase. These processes are an important component of gas phase ion chemistry.
Associative ionization is a gas phase reaction in which two atoms or molecules interact to form a single product ion. [4]
where species A with excess internal energy (indicated by the asterisk) interacts with B to form the ion AB+.
One or both of the interacting species may have excess internal energy.
Charge-exchange ionization (also called charge-transfer ionization) is a gas phase reaction between an ion and a neutral species
in which the charge of the ion is transferred to the neutral. [5]
In chemical ionization, ions are produced through the reaction of ions of a reagent gas with other species. [6] Some common reagent gases include: methane, ammonia, and isobutane.
Chemi-ionization can be represented by
where G is the excited state species (indicated by the superscripted asterisk), and M is the species that is ionized by the loss of an electron to form the radical cation (indicated by the superscripted "plus-dot").
Penning ionization refers to the interaction between a gas-phase excited-state atom or molecule G* and a target molecule M resulting in the formation of a radical molecular cation M+., an electron e−, and a neutral gas molecule G: [7]
Penning ionization occurs when the target molecule has an ionization potential lower than the internal energy of the excited-state atom or molecule. Associative Penning ionization can also occur:
There are many important dissociation reactions that take place in the gas phase.
CID (also called collisionally activated dissociation - CAD) is a method used to fragment molecular ions in the gas phase. [8] [9] The molecular ions collide with neutral gas molecules such as helium, nitrogen, or argon. In the collision some of the kinetic energy is converted into internal energy which results in fragmentation.
Charge remote fragmentation is a type of covalent bond breaking that occurs in a gas phase ion in which the cleaved bond is not adjacent to the location of the charge. [10] [11]
There are several types of charge-transfer reactions [12] (also known as charge-permutation reactions [13] ): partial-charge transfer
charge-stripping reaction [14]
and charge-inversion reaction [15] positive to negative
and negative to positive
Pairwise interactions between alkali metal ions and amino acids, small peptides and nucleobases have been studied theoretically in some detail. [16]
A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the chemical transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. When chemical reactions occur, the atoms are rearranged and the reaction is accompanied by an energy change as new products are generated. Classically, chemical reactions encompass changes that only involve the positions of electrons in the forming and breaking of chemical bonds between atoms, with no change to the nuclei, and can often be described by a chemical equation. Nuclear chemistry is a sub-discipline of chemistry that involves the chemical reactions of unstable and radioactive elements where both electronic and nuclear changes can occur.
The electron affinity (Eea) of an atom or molecule is defined as the amount of energy released when an electron attaches to a neutral atom or molecule in the gaseous state to form an anion.
An ion source is a device that creates atomic and molecular ions. Ion sources are used to form ions for mass spectrometers, optical emission spectrometers, particle accelerators, ion implanters and ion engines.
A mass spectrum is a histogram plot of intensity vs. mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) in a chemical sample, usually acquired using an instrument called a mass spectrometer. Not all mass spectra of a given substance are the same; for example, some mass spectrometers break the analyte molecules into fragments; others observe the intact molecular masses with little fragmentation. A mass spectrum can represent many different types of information based on the type of mass spectrometer and the specific experiment applied. Common fragmentation processes for organic molecules are the McLafferty rearrangement and alpha cleavage. Straight chain alkanes and alkyl groups produce a typical series of peaks: 29 (CH3CH2+), 43 (CH3CH2CH2+), 57 (CH3CH2CH2CH2+), 71 (CH3CH2CH2CH2CH2+) etc.
Tandem mass spectrometry, also known as MS/MS or MS2, is a technique in instrumental analysis where two or more stages of analysis using one or more mass analyzer are performed with an additional reaction step in between these analyses to increase their abilities to analyse chemical samples. A common use of tandem MS is the analysis of biomolecules, such as proteins and peptides.
In organic chemistry, a radical anion is a free radical species that carries a negative charge. Radical anions are encountered in organic chemistry as reduced derivatives of polycyclic aromatic compounds, e.g. sodium naphthenide. An example of a non-carbon radical anion is the superoxide anion, formed by transfer of one electron to an oxygen molecule. Radical anions are typically indicated by .
A sector instrument is a general term for a class of mass spectrometer that uses a static electric (E) or magnetic (B) sector or some combination of the two as a mass analyzer. Popular combinations of these sectors have been the EB, BE, three-sector BEB and four-sector EBEB (electric-magnetic-electric-magnetic) instruments. Most modern sector instruments are double-focusing instruments in that they focus the ion beams both in direction and velocity.
The Rice–Ramsperger–Kassel–Marcus (RRKM) theory is a theory of chemical reactivity. It was developed by Rice and Ramsperger in 1927 and Kassel in 1928 and generalized in 1952 by Marcus who took the transition state theory developed by Eyring in 1935 into account. These methods enable the computation of simple estimates of the unimolecular reaction rates from a few characteristics of the potential energy surface.
In chemistry, an adduct is a product of a direct addition of two or more distinct molecules, resulting in a single reaction product containing all atoms of all components. The resultant is considered a distinct molecular species. Examples include the addition of sodium bisulfite to an aldehyde to give a sulfonate. It can be considered as a single product resulting from the direct combination of different molecules which comprises all atoms of the reactant molecules.
A mass chromatogram is a representation of mass spectrometry data as a chromatogram, where the x-axis represents time and the y-axis represents signal intensity. The source data contains mass information; however, it is not graphically represented in a mass chromatogram in favor of visualizing signal intensity versus time. The most common use of this data representation is when mass spectrometry is used in conjunction with some form of chromatography, such as in liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry or gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. In this case, the x-axis represents retention time, analogous to any other chromatogram. The y-axis represents signal intensity or relative signal intensity. There are many different types of metrics that this intensity may represent, depending on what information is extracted from each mass spectrum.
Penning ionization is a form of chemi-ionization, an ionization process involving reactions between neutral atoms or molecules. The Penning effect is put to practical use in applications such as gas-discharge neon lamps and fluorescent lamps, where the lamp is filled with a Penning mixture to improve the electrical characteristics of the lamps.
Chemi-ionization is the formation of an ion through the reaction of a gas phase atom or molecule with another atom or molecule when the collision energy is below the energy required to ionize the reagents. The reaction may involve a reagent in an excited state or may result in the formation of a new chemical bond. Chemi-ionization can proceed through the Penning, associative, dissociative or rearrangement ionization reactions. Includes reactions that produce a free electron or a pair of ions.
Appearance energy is the minimum energy that must be supplied to a gas phase atom or molecule in order to produce an ion. In mass spectrometry, it is accounted as the voltage to correspond for electron ionization. This is the minimum electron energy that produces an ion. In photoionization, it is the minimum photon energy of a photon that produces some ion signal. For example, the indene bromide ion (IndBr+) only loses bromine at an incident photon energy of 10.2 eV, so the product, indenyl, has an appearance energy of 10.2 eV.
In mass spectrometry, resolution is a measure of the ability to distinguish two peaks of slightly different mass-to-charge ratios ΔM, in a mass spectrum.
Electron capture ionization is the ionization of a gas phase atom or molecule by attachment of an electron to create an ion of the form . The reaction is
Selected ion monitoring (SIM) is a mass spectrometry scanning mode in which only a limited mass-to-charge ratio range is transmitted/detected by the instrument, as opposed to the full spectrum range. This mode of operation typically results in significantly increased sensitivity. Due to their inherent nature, this technique is most effective—and therefore most common—on quadrupole mass spectrometers, Orbitrap, and Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometers.
Charge transfer coefficient, and symmetry factor are two related parameters used in description of the kinetics of electrochemical reactions. They appear in the Butler–Volmer equation and related expressions.
Unimolecular ion decomposition is the fragmentation of a gas phase ion in a reaction with a molecularity of one. Ions with sufficient internal energy may fragment in a mass spectrometer, which in some cases may degrade the mass spectrometer performance, but in other cases, such as tandem mass spectrometry, the fragmentation can reveal information about the structure of the ion.
Collision-induced dissociation (CID), also known as collisionally activated dissociation (CAD), is a mass spectrometry technique to induce fragmentation of selected ions in the gas phase. The selected ions are usually accelerated by applying an electrical potential to increase the ion kinetic energy and then allowed to collide with neutral molecules. In the collision, some of the kinetic energy is converted into internal energy which results in bond breakage and the fragmentation of the molecular ion into smaller fragments. These fragment ions can then be analyzed by tandem mass spectrometry.
In chromatography, resolution is a measure of the separation of two peaks of different retention time t in a chromatogram.