The resolution of a mass spectrometer depends on the efficiency of separating ions with different ion masses. The mass of an atom is approximated to the sum of the masses of protons and neutrons inside, considering the masses of protons and neutrons as equal. However, the masses of the proton (1.6726 × 10−24 g) and neutron (1.6749 × 10−24 g) are not truly equal. There is a minor error in the expression of atomic masses relative to the simplest atom of hydrogen. For...

Mass spectrometry is an important technique for the identification of pure compounds. However, it has some limitations for the analysis of complex mixtures, often due to excessive fragmentation making the spectrum too complicated to decipher. Mass spectrometry can be combined with suitable separation methods in sequence, forming hyphenated methods, which are useful in the analysis of complex mixtures.
GC–MS is a powerful hyphenated method commonly used in forensics and environmental...

The position of the absorption signal of a sample is reported relative to the position of the signal of tetramethylsilane (TMS), which is added as an internal reference while recording spectra. The difference between the absorption frequencies of the sample and TMS (in Hz) is divided by the spectrometer operating frequency (in MHz) to obtain a dimensionless quantity called the chemical shift. It is reported on the δ (delta) scale and expressed in parts per million.
For instance, the proton...

Heteronuclear correlation spectroscopy is an analytical technique that investigates the coupling between different types of nuclei, often a proton and an X-nucleus, such as carbon-13 or nitrogen-15. This method is commonly used in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to gain insights into complex chemical compounds' structural and compositional aspects. A typical heteronuclear correlation spectrum displays X-nucleus chemical shifts on one axis and a proton spectrum on the other...