Book Description

This dissertation investigates Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FTICR-MS) based techniques to study the impact of molecular structure on conformation and binding energetics. A novel method to determine collison cross sectional areas using FTICR (CRAFTI), initially developed by the Dearden lab, was applied to study the conformations of molecular systems with unique structural attributes in an attempt to explore the molecular range of CRAFTI. The systems chosen for CRAFTI studies include crown-ether alkylammonium complexes and biogenic amino acids. The results were found to be consistent with expected behavior, and strongly correlated with experimental measurements made using ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) and predictions from computations. The analytical sensitivity of CRAFTI was highlighted by its ability to distinguish the normal and branched structural isomers of butylamine. Besides conformation characterization, quantitative evaluation of binding was undertaken on metal ion-cryptand complexes on the FTICR instrument using sustained off-resonance irradiation –collision-induced dissociation (SORI CID) method. Complex formation and dissociation was found to be a strong function of both guest and host sizes which impacted steric selectivity, and polarizability. The results demonstrate the ability of FTICR to simultaneously determine structure, conformation and binding thereby providing comprehensive molecular characterization.