Electrospray ionization - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Electrospray ionization is a technique used in mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometry is an analytical technique that measures the mass-to-charge ratio of charged particles.It is used for determining masses of particles, for determining the elemental composition of a sample or molecule, and for elucidating the chemical structures of molecules, such as peptides and...

to produce ions. It is especially useful in producing ions from macromolecule

Macromolecule

A macromolecule is a very large molecule commonly created by some form of polymerization. In biochemistry, the term is applied to the four conventional biopolymers , as well as non-polymeric molecules with large molecular mass such as macrocycles...

s because it overcomes the propensity of these molecules to fragment when ionized. The development of electrospray ionization for the analysis of biological macromolecules was rewarded with the attribution of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...

to John Bennett Fenn in 2002.
One of the original instruments used by Dr. Fenn is on display at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Mass spectrometry using ESI is called electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) or, less commonly, electrospray mass spectrometry (ES-MS).

History

Early researchers:

John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh
John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, OM was an English physicist who, with William Ramsay, discovered the element argon, an achievement for which he earned the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904...
John Zeleny
John Zeleny
John Zeleny was a Czech-American physicist at the University of Minnesota, who in 1911 invented the Zeleny electroscope. He also studied the effect of an electric field on a liquid meniscus....
Malcolm Dole
Malcolm Dole
Malcolm Dole was an American chemist known for the Dole Effect in which he proved that the atomic weight of oxygen in air is greater than that of oxygen in water and for his work on electrospray ionization, polymer chemistry, and electrochemistry.- Selected writings : ; -External links:*...
Gall
Geoffrey Ingram Taylor
Geoffrey Ingram Taylor
Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor OM was a British physicist, mathematician and expert on fluid dynamics and wave theory. His biographer and one-time student, George Batchelor, described him as "one of the most notable scientists of this century".-Biography:Taylor was born in St. John's Wood, London...

Ionization mechanism

The liquid containing the analyte(s) of interest is dispersed by electrospray into a fine aerosol. Because the ion formation involves extensive solvent evaporation, the typical solvents for electrospray ionization are prepared by mixing water with volatile organic compounds (e.g. methanol, acetonitrile). To decrease the initial droplet size, compounds that increase the conductivity (e.g. acetic acid) are customarily added to the solution. Large-flow electrosprays can benefit from additional nebulization

Nebulizer

In medicine, a nebulizer is a device used to administer medication in the form of a mist inhaled into the lungs....

by an inert gas such as nitrogen

Nitrogen

Nitrogen is a chemical element that has the symbol N, atomic number of 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78.08% by volume of Earth's atmosphere...

. The aerosol is sampled into the first vacuum stage of a mass spectrometer through a capillary, which can be heated to aid further solvent evaporation from the charged droplets. The solvent evaporates from a charged droplet until it becomes unstable upon reaching its Rayleigh limit. At this point, the droplet deforms and emits charged jets in a process known as Coulomb fission. During the fission, the droplet loses a small percentage of its mass (1.0-2.3%) along with a relatively large percentage of its charge (10-18%).

There are two major theories that explain the final production of gas-phase ions:

The Ion Evaporation Model (IEM) suggests that as the droplet reaches a certain radius the field strength at the surface of the droplet becomes large enough to assist the field desorption of solvated ions.
The Charge Residue Model (CRM) suggests that electrospray droplets undergo evaporation and fission cycles, eventually leading progeny droplets that contain on average one analyte ion or less. The gas-phase ions form after the remaining solvent molecules evaporate, leaving the analyte with the charges that the droplet carried.

While there is no definite scientific proof, a large body of indirect evidence suggests that small ions are liberated into the gas phase through the ion evaporation mechanism, while larger ions form by charged residue mechanism.

The ions observed by mass spectrometry may be quasimolecular ions created by the addition of a proton

Proton

The proton is a subatomic particle with the symbol or and a positive electric charge of 1 elementary charge. One or more protons are present in the nucleus of each atom, along with neutrons. The number of protons in each atom is its atomic number....

(a hydrogen ion) and denoted [M + H]⁺, or of another cation such as sodium

Sodium

Sodium is a chemical element with the symbol Na and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal and is a member of the alkali metals; its only stable isotope is 23Na. It is an abundant element that exists in numerous minerals, most commonly as sodium chloride...

ion, [M + Na]⁺, or the removal of a proton, [M − H]⁻. Multiply charged ions such as [M + nH]ⁿ⁺ are often observed. For large macromolecules, there can be many charge states, resulting in a characteristic charge state envelope. All these are even-electron ion species: electron

Electron

The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton...

s (alone) are not added or removed, unlike in some other ionization sources. The analytes are sometimes involved in electrochemical processes, leading to shifts of the corresponding peaks in the mass spectrum

Mass spectrum

A mass spectrum is an intensity vs. m/z plot representing a chemical analysis. Hence, the mass spectrum of a sample is a pattern representing the distribution of ions by mass in a sample. It is a histogram usually acquired using an instrument called a mass spectrometer...

Variants

The electrosprays operated at low flow rates generate much smaller initial droplets, which ensure improved ionization efficiency. In 1994, two research groups coined the name micro-electrospray (microspray) for electrosprays working at low flow rates. Emmett and Caprioli demonstrated improved performance for HPLC-MS analyses when the electrospray was operated at 300-800 nL/min. Wilm and Mann demonstrated that a capillary flow of ~ 25 nL/min can sustain an electrospray at the tip of emitters fabricated by pulling glass capillaries to a few micrometers. The latter was renamed nano-electrospray (nanospray) in 1996. Currently the name nanospray is also in use for electrosprays fed by pumps at low flow rates, not only for self-fed electrosprays. There are no well-defined flow rate ranges for electrospray, microspray, and nano-electrospray.

Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS)

Electrospray ionization is the ion source of choice to couple liquid chromatography

High-performance liquid chromatography

High-performance liquid chromatography , HPLC, is a chromatographic technique that can separate a mixture of compounds and is used in biochemistry and analytical chemistry to identify, quantify and purify the individual components of the mixture.HPLC typically utilizes different types of stationary...

with mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometry

. The analysis can be performed online, by feeding the liquid eluting from the LC column directly to an electrospray, or offline, by collecting fractions to be later analyzed in a classical nanoelectrospray-mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometry

setup. The effect of various ion-pairing agents (such as TFA on Electrospray-LCMS has been studied.

Noncovalent gas phase interactions

Electrospray ionization is also ideal in studying noncovalent gas phase interactions. The electrospray process is capable of transferring liquid-phase noncovalent complexes into the gas phase without disrupting the noncovalent interaction. This means that a cluster of two molecules can be studied in the gas phase by other mass spectrometry techniques. An interesting example of this is studying the interactions between enzyme

Enzyme

Enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process, called substrates, are converted into different molecules, called products. Almost all chemical reactions in a biological cell need enzymes in order to occur at rates...

s and drugs which are inhibitors of the enzyme. Because inhibitors generally work by noncovalently binding to its target enzyme with reasonable affinity the noncovalent complex can be studied in this way. Competition studies between STAT6 and inhibitors have been done in this way to screen for potential new drug candidates.

External links

Electrospray Ionization Primer National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
New Objective: What is Electrospray?

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Ionization mechanism

Variants

Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS)

Noncovalent gas phase interactions

See also

External links