Regiospecificity in deuterium labeling determined by mass spectrometry

Several mass spectrometry methods were explored to determine the regiospecificity of deuterium substitutions in hydrocarbon mixtures. The case investigated in this work was that of ethane mixtures obtained by catalytic HD exchange between either C(2)H(6) and D(2) or C(2)D(6) and H(2) over platinum surfaces. A total of ten isotopologs are possible, and were indeed detected in all cases. Deconvolution of low-resolution mass spectra was found sufficient to determine the composition of the gas mixtures in terms of the total number of deuterium substitutions, but not to identify symmetric versus asymmetric substitutions in the C(2)D(2)H(4), C(2)D(3)H(3), and C(2)D(4)H(2) products. High-resolution mass spectrometry allowed the separation of the intensities due to C(2)X(4)(+) fragments from those from molecular C(2)X(6)(+) signals (X = H or D), and with that for a more accurate determination of the composition of the mixtures. Relative probabilities were determined for the symmetric versus asymmetric removal of X(2) from C(2)X(6)(+) ions and for isotope scrambling in the mass spectrometer, and with that information fairly good cracking patterns were then calculated for the C(2)X(4)(+) fragments produced by each individual pure C(2)X(6) isotopologue. However, total deconvolution of all ten components in the ethane mixtures obtained by HD exchange catalysis was beyond the experimental accuracy of the measurements. Tandem mass spectrometry/collision-induced decomposition mass spectrometry (MS/CID-MS) proved more useful for this task. In particular, it was possible to determine the proportion of symmetric versus asymmetric double HD exchange in samples for which the total ethane-d(2) (in the case of C(2)H(6) + D(2)) or ethane-d(4) (with C(2)D(6) + H(2)) amounted to only approximately 3% on the ethane mix. A comparison with other analytical methods, NMR in particular, is provided.