Field desorption mass spectrometry quaternary ammonium salts

✍ Scribed by David A. Brent; Doris J. Rouse; Martin C. Sammons; Maurice M. Bursey

• Book ID: 104238462
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1973
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 178 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0040-4039
• DOI: 10.1016/s0040-4039(01)87129-x

✦ Synopsis

The new technique of field desorption (PD) mass spectrometry' holds great promise for analysis of compounds not conveniently evaporated by direct-probe techniques. In field desorption, a sample deposited on the surface of a prepared wire is ionized apparently by tunneling of an electron under the influence of a high electric field gradient from the molecule to the metal. Coulombic repulsion of the positive ion and the carbon microneedles is considered to drive the ion into the gas phase.

Previous reports from the laboratory originating this technique, the Institute for Physical Chemistry of the University of Bonn, have indicated its utility in obtaining useful information about the gram-formula weights of alkali metal salts of typical organic acids such as acetic acid' and of more thermally unstable acids such as the nucleotides.

3 We wish to report that the technique of field desorption is also useful for obtaining gramformula weights of at least the cation, and sometimes of both anion and cation, of quaternary ammonium salts.