STRUCTURAL ELUCIDATION OF INTACT HEAVY MOLECULES AND MOLECULAR COMPLEXES IN MASS SPECTROMETERS

摘要

The invention relates to mass spectrometric analyses of heavy molecules and molecular complexes having molecular weights sometimes well above 100,000 daltons, by collision treatment in linear RF multipole collision cells. A mixture of at least one light collision gas (<40 daltons) and at least one heavy collision gas (>80 daltons) is provided in a linear RF collision cell. The heavy collision gas results in high-momentum and high-energy collisions, which leads to splitting and further fragmentation of portions of the heavy molecular (complex) ions. For this purpose, the molecular (complex) ions are axially injected into the collision cell at kinetic energies of several hundred electronvolts per charge; due to the collisions with the heavy collision gas molecules they are deflected from the axis and excited to undergo strong oscillations in the radial direction in the focusing RF field. The light collision gas serves in turn for damping these oscillations.

主权项

1. A method for the structural elucidation of heavy molecular ions and molecular complex ions having charge-related masses m/z of greater than 2000 daltons in a linear radio frequency multipole collision cell, wherein the ions are accelerated to a predetermined kinetic energy and axially injected into the linear collision cell, and wherein any remaining molecular (complex) ions and resulting fragment ions are conducted out of the linear collision cell to a mass analyzer, wherein collisionally induced fragmentation is carried out in the linear collision cell in a mixture of a light collision gas and a heavy collision gas, wherein a heavy collision gas has a molecular mass of at least approximately 80 daltons, and a light collision gas has a molecular mass of approximately 40 daltons at most.