Fragmentation reactions in the mass spectrometer for C2-C5 alkanes

Abstract

Deconvolution–convolution techniques have been used to extract information from ionization efficiency data concerning the chemical decomposition of the molecular and fragment ions of the C₂-C₅ alkanes which occurs in the electron impact ion source of a mass spectrometer. The extracted data indicate that many of the observed ions are produced by two or more chemically different decompositions, and evidence for isomeric structures of some ions is presented. Ionization efficiency data calculated from the fragmentation schemes presented are in excellent agreement with the observed data over the 18 eV range of electron energies immediately above the ionization potential of the molecule.