THERMALLY INDUCED DISSOCIATION OF IONS FROM ELECTROSPRAY MASS-SPECTROMETRY

The thermally induced dissociation (TID) of ions at near atmospheric pressure, followed by their mass spectrometric analysis, is demonstrated. The TID occurs in a heated metal capillary interface, and should be broadly applicable to any system capable of producing ions at high pressure. The heated capillary provides a reaction vessel, potentially very useful for kinetic and mechanistic studies of ions. The technique has been applied to the fragmentation of large multiply charged ions from an electrospray ionization source. Preliminary results show that stability for multiply protonated peptide or protein molecules is inversely related to its charge.