Collisional activation spectra of organic ions

Collision with neutral molecules is shown to provide a convenient method of adding internal energy to ions in a field‐free drift region of the mass spectrometer. The effects on this process of ion accelerating potential, target gas pressure and identity, and precursor ion internal energy and mass have been investigated to optimize experimental conditions. Such collisions cause ion decompositions whose activation energies cover a broad range; for a particular ion such decompositions can be viewed as its “collisional activation (CA) spectrum.” CA spectra, which can be obtained for each ion in the normal mass spectrum, and which appear to follow the predictions of the quasi equilibrium theory, show many more of the possible unimolecular ion decomposition reactions for an ion than do unimolecular metastables, and thus provide valuable information for ion reaction mechanisms and molecular structure determination. Collisional activation can sometimes yield ion energies which are relatively inaccessible by electron impact. The precursor ion internal energy has a negligible effect on the ion's CA spectrum except for product ions formed through the processes of lowest activation energy. Thus, CA spectra should also be valuable for the characterization of ion structures.