Importance of gas-phase proton affinities in determining the electrospray ionization response for analytes and solvents.

The effect of gas-phase proton transfer reactions on the mass spectral response of solvents and analytes with known gas-phase proton affinities was evaluated. Methanol, ethanol, propanol and water mixtures were employed to probe the effect of gas-phase proton transfer reactions on the abundance of protonated solvent ions. Ion-molecule reactions were carried out either in an atmospheric pressure electrospray ionization source or in the central quadrupole of a triple-quadrupole mass spectrometer. The introduction of solvent vapor with higher gas-phase proton affinity than the solvent being electrosprayed caused protons to transfer to the gas-phase solvent molecules. In mixed solvents, protonated solvent clusters of the solvent with higher gas-phase proton affinity dominated the resulting mass spectra. The effect of solvent gas-phase proton affinity on analyte response was also investigated, and the analyte response was suppressed or eliminated in solvents with gas-phase proton affinities higher than that of the analyte.

High-resolution mass spectrometry with a multiple pass quadrupole mass analyzer.

The peak shape narrows and the resolution improves if the ions are simply reflected back and forth through a conventional quadrupole mass analyzer. CO(+) and N(2)(+) at m/z = 28 are separated to 50% valley with half of the original signal remaining. These two ions can be resolved to baseline (m/Δm) = 5000 with 1% of the original signal remaining.