Qualitative gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analyses using amines as chemical ionization reagent gases

Ammonia is a very useful chemical ionization (CI) reagent gas for the qualitative analyses of compounds by positive ion gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GCMS). The gas is readily available, inexpensive, and leaves no carbon contamination in the MS source. Compounds of interest to our laboratory typically yield abundant protonated or ammoniated species, which are indicative of a compound's molecular weight. Nevertheless, some labile compounds fragment extensively by substitution and elimination reactions and yield no molecular weight information. In these cases, a CI reagent gas mixture of methylamine in methane prepared dynamically was found to be very useful in obtaining molecular weight data. Likewise, deuterated ammonia and deuterated methylamine are useful CI reagent gases for determining the exchangeable protons in organic compounds. Deuterated methylamine CI reagent gas is conveniently prepared by dynamically mixing small amounts of methylamine with excess deuterated ammonia.