• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.92-99
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• 2010

Photoexcitation of a precursor ion inside a cell floated at high voltage installed in a tandem time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometer provides triple tandem mass spectrometric information and allows kinetic and mechanistic studies. In this work, the factors affecting, or downgrading, the performance of the technique were identified. Ion-optical and computational analyses showed that an optimum instrument could be designed by utilizing a reflectron with linear-plus-quadratic potential inside. Theoretical predictions were confirmed by tests with instruments built with different ion-optical layout. With optimized instruments, masses of intermediate ions in the consecutive dissociation of a precursor ion could be determined with the maximum error of $\pm5$ Da. We also observed excellent agreement in dynamical parameters (critical energy and entropy) for the dissociation of a model peptide ion determined by instruments with different ion-optical layout operated under optimum conditions. This suggests that these parameters can be determined reliably by the kinetic method developed previously when properly designed and operated tandem TOF instruments are used.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.318-323
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• 2007

Electronic photofragmentation spectrum of protonated tyrosine-alanine dipeptide ions(YAH+) was obtained in the wavenumber region of 34500~36700 cm-1 using a quadrupole ion trap time-of-flight mass spectrometer (QIT-TOFMS). YAH+ ions were produced by electrospray ionization, stored in the ion trap and then irradiated by ultraviolet laser pulses which induced photofragmentation of the ions. The electronic photofragmentation spectrum was obtained by monitoring the photodissociation yields of YAH+ ions as a function of the laser wavelength. The spectrum exhibited two broad peaks which were assigned as S1 and S2 by theoretical calculations using a time-dependent density functional method. The broad widths of the peaks in the spectrum were explained by the overlaps of the peaks originated from various conformers of YAH+ ions which were present in the gas phase at room temperature and also by the contributions of the hot bands.