Measuring Electronic Spectra of Differential Mobility-Selected Ions in the Gas Phase

We describe the modification of a commercially available tandem differential mobility mass spectrometer (DMS) that has been retrofitted to facilitate photodissociation (PD) of differential mobility-separated, mass-selected molecular ions. We first show that a mixture of protonated quinoline/isoquinoline (QH⁺/iQH⁺) can be separated using differential mobility spectrometry. Efficient separation is facilitated by addition of methanol to the DMS environment and increased residence time within the DMS. In action spectroscopy experiments, we gate each isomer using appropriate DMS settings, trap the ions in the third quadrupole of a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer, and irradiate them with tunable light from an optical parametric oscillator (OPO). The resulting mass spectra are recorded as the OPO wavelength is scanned, giving PD action spectra. We compare our PD spectra with previously recorded spectra for the same species and show that our instrument reproduces previous works faithfully.