Characterization Of Gas Phase Chiral Reactions By Electrospray Ionization Esi Fourier Transform Mass Spectrometry Ftms

Mass spectrometers are used by almost all chemists and many researchers from neighboring disciplines such as physics, medicine, or biology as a powerful a- lytical tool. Its advantages are high sensitivity, speed, and almost no sample c- sumption. During the last two decades, mass spectrometry experienced a boom of new developments pushing its limits further and further at an increasing speed - just similar to the progress in NMR spectroscopy in the 1970s. However, a mass spectrometer does not only serve as a machine for solving complicated analytical problems, it evolved meanwhile to a complete laboratory for the investigation of molecules, clusters, and other species under the envir- ment-free conditions of the highly diluted gas phase. These special conditions existing only in high vacuum change the properties of the particles under study significantly with respect to their energetics and reaction pathways. For ex- ple, temperature is a macroscopic property of a large ensemble of particles in thermal equilibrium and is thus not defined for a single ion. This fact has severe implications for the measurement of kinetic and thermodynamic data of g- phase species. On the other hand, the examination of gas-phase properties has the advantage that systems reduced to minimum complexity can be studied more easily without the complicated influences of solvents or counterions. In parti- lar, the combination of isotopic labeling and mass spectrometry allows for a detailed analysis of reaction mechanisms or conformational analysis through H/D exchange experiments not only on biomolecules.

Abstract: Design, development, and coupling of an electrospray ionization (ESI) source with a Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron (FTICR) Mass Spectrometer (MS). Developed ESI source was used for detection and characterization of small and large molecules. Dissertation Discovery Company and University of Florida are dedicated to making scholarly works more discoverable and accessible throughout the world. This dissertation, "Internal and External Source Electrospray Ionization Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometry" by Ragulan Ramanathan, was obtained from University of Florida and is being sold with permission from the author. A digital copy of this work may also be found in the university's institutional repository, IR@UF. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation.