Speaker
Description
The installation at FELIX of a new quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometer (Bruker Amazon ETD) equipped with extensive MS/MS capabilities including Electron Transfer Dissociation (ETD) has opened new venues in the spectroscopic exploration of ion chemistry. We will give an overview of a number of recent, partially unpublished results. The sensitive ion source and the extensive MS/MS and MSn capabilities enable detailed investigation of dissociation reaction networks. We show an example for the deamidation reactions of small peptides containing Asn and Gln side chains. The ETD source enables the investigation of the typical ETD generated peptide fragments, especially c- and z-type ions. We address the question of whether radical migration occurs in z-type ions and whether c-type ions reveal details of the ETD reaction mechanism. The ETD source can also be used to induce 1-electron reduction of multiply charged metal-ligand complexes (“ETnoD”). We show that this enables the study of coordination complexes in oxidation states that are otherwise hard to access by ESI ionization and we investigate the structural changes upon reduction of the metal center for different coordination complexes. Finally, very recently, experiments replacing the ESI source with an APCI source have enabled the investigation of non-polar species. We present the first IR spectrum of protonated Buckminster fullerene.