Based on a study of competitive substituent effects in a Claisen–Schmidt reaction, interfacial effects have been shown to play an important role in accelerated reactions that occur in thin films and droplets. A role for the interface in an accelerated C−C bond-formation reaction between 6hydroxy-1-indanone and aromatic aldehydes is indicated by cooperative interactions between p-methylbenzaldehyde and p-nitrobenzaldehyde. Additional acceleration over that occurring in bulk reactions is seen for p-methylbenzaldehyde, but only in the presence of p-nitrobenzaldehyde. A decrease in the degree of acceleration is detected when the reaction is forced electrostatically to occur inside the thin film, and the interface is shown to participate in the accelerated reactions. This experimental evidence for interfacial thin film and droplet acceleration supports a recent model and builds on earlier work which locates molecules within evaporating droplets in electrosprays.

Based on a study of competitive substituent effects in a Claisen–Schmidt reaction, interfacial effects have been shown to play an important role in accelerated reactions that occur in thin films and droplets. A role for the interface in an accelerated C−C bond-formation reaction between 6hydroxy-1-indanone and aromatic aldehydes is indicated by cooperative interactions between p-methylbenzaldehyde and p-nitrobenzaldehyde. Additional acceleration over that occurring in bulk reactions is seen for p-methylbenzaldehyde, but only in the presence of p-nitrobenzaldehyde. A decrease in the degree of acceleration is detected when the reaction is forced electrostatically to occur inside the thin film, and the interface is shown to participate in the accelerated reactions. This experimental evidence for interfacial thin film and droplet acceleration supports a recent model and builds on earlier work which locates molecules within evaporating droplets in electrosprays.

Tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) is powerful for chemical identification but it is still insufficient for explicit ion structure determination. A strategy is introduced to elucidate MS fragment ion structures using NMR spectroscopy for the first time. In our experiments, precursor ions are dissociated at atmospheric pressure and the resulting fragment ions are identified by mass spectrometry but collected outside the mass spectrometer, making the subsequent NMR measurements possible. This new strategy has been applied to determine the chemical structure of the characteristic b₂ fragment ion, a subject of longstanding debate in MS-based proteomics.

Tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) is powerful for chemical identification but it is still insufficient for explicit ion structure determination. A strategy is introduced to elucidate MS fragment ion structures using NMR spectroscopy for the first time. In our experiments, precursor ions are dissociated at atmospheric pressure and the resulting fragment ions are identified by mass spectrometry but collected outside the mass spectrometer, making the subsequent NMR measurements possible. This new strategy has been applied to determine the chemical structure of the characteristic b₂ fragment ion, a subject of longstanding debate in MS-based proteomics.

Noble metals can be ionized by electrochemical corrosion and transported by electrospray ionization. Mass spectrometry (MS) showed solvated metal ions as the main ionic constituent of the sprayed droplets. Collection of the electrospray plume on a surface yielded noble metal nanoparticles (NPs) under ambient conditions. The NPs were characterized by several techniques. Under typical conditions, capped-nanoparticle sizes averaged 2.2 nm for gold and 6.5 nm for silver. The gold nanoparticles showed high catalytic activity in the reduction of p-nitrophenol by NaBH₄. Efficient catalysis was also observed by simply directing the spray of solvated Au⁺ onto the surface of an aqueous p-nitrophenol/NaBH₄ mixture. Organometallic ions were generated by spiking ligands into the spray solvent: for example, Cu^I bipyridine cations dominated the spray during Cu electrocorrosion in acetonitrile containing bipyridine. This organometallic reagent was shown to be effective in the radical polymerization of styrene.

Reaction monitoring using inductive ESI mass spectrometry allows chemical reactions to be tracked in real time, including air- and moisture-sensitive as well as heterogeneous reactions. Highly concentrated solutions can also be monitored for long periods without emitter clogging. Sheath gas assists in nebulization and a sample splitter reduces the delay time and minimizes contamination of the instrument. Short-lived intermediates (ca. 5 s) were observed in Pd/C-catalyzed hydrogenolysis, and several intermediates were seen in Negishi cross-coupling reactions.

Electrolytic spray deposition was used to pattern surfaces with 2D metallic nanostructures. Spots that contain silver nanoparticles (AgNP) were created by landing solvated silver ions at desired locations using electrically floated masks to focus the metal ions to an area as little as 20 μm in diameter. The AgNPs formed are unprotected and their aggregates can be used for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). The morphology and SERS activity of the NP structures were controlled by the surface coverage of landed silver ions. The NP structures created could be used as substrates onto which SERS samples were deposited or prepared directly on top of predeposited samples of interest. The evenly distributed hot spots in the micron-sized aggregates had an average SERS enhancement factor of 10⁸. The surfaces showed SERS activity when using lasers of different wavelengths (532, 633, and 785 nm) and were stable in air.

Noble metals can be ionized by electrochemical corrosion and transported by electrospray ionization. Mass spectrometry (MS) showed solvated metal ions as the main ionic constituent of the sprayed droplets. Collection of the electrospray plume on a surface yielded noble metal nanoparticles (NPs) under ambient conditions. The NPs were characterized by several techniques. Under typical conditions, capped-nanoparticle sizes averaged 2.2 nm for gold and 6.5 nm for silver. The gold nanoparticles showed high catalytic activity in the reduction of p-nitrophenol by NaBH₄. Efficient catalysis was also observed by simply directing the spray of solvated Au⁺ onto the surface of an aqueous p-nitrophenol/NaBH₄ mixture. Organometallic ions were generated by spiking ligands into the spray solvent: for example, Cu^I bipyridine cations dominated the spray during Cu electrocorrosion in acetonitrile containing bipyridine. This organometallic reagent was shown to be effective in the radical polymerization of styrene.

Reaction monitoring using inductive ESI mass spectrometry allows chemical reactions to be tracked in real time, including air- and moisture-sensitive as well as heterogeneous reactions. Highly concentrated solutions can also be monitored for long periods without emitter clogging. Sheath gas assists in nebulization and a sample splitter reduces the delay time and minimizes contamination of the instrument. Short-lived intermediates (ca. 5 s) were observed in Pd/C-catalyzed hydrogenolysis, and several intermediates were seen in Negishi cross-coupling reactions.

Paper spray ionization can be used to study organic reactions in solution under ambient conditions by utilizing the rate acceleration that occurs in reactions in small volumes of solution. In this novel approach to performing reactions, reagents are transferred onto a triangular paper surface by drop-casting and charged droplets of the reaction product mixture are released by field evaporation and examined online by mass spectrometry. The increase in the rate of product formation is attributed to solvent evaporation, which increases reagent concentrations, changes the pH, and enhances intermolecular interactions. As a proof of principle, the Katritzky reaction between a pyrylium salt and mono- or diamines, including substituted anilines, was investigated. The influence of electronic and steric effects was evaluated straightforwardly. The carbon chain length of α,ω-diamines was found to control the formation of mono- versus disubstituted products, thus reflecting the strong destabilizing coulombic effects in the shorter carbon-chain systems. Information on the mechanism was provided by the observation of 2H-pyran intermediates and mixed pyridinium–2H-pyran ions. The rates of product formation in the base-assisted Katritzky reaction increase linearly from 0.1 to 10 equivalents of triethylamine. The reactive paper spray technique, owing to its speed and information content, has potential pedagogical value and provides a tool to explore organic reactions and correlate experimental results with current mechanistic understanding.

Diagnosis of human bladder cancer in untreated tissue sections is achieved by using imaging data from desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (DESI-MS) combined with multivariate statistical analysis. We use the distinctive DESI-MS glycerophospholipid (GP) mass spectral profiles to visually characterize and formally classify twenty pairs (40 tissue samples) of human cancerous and adjacent normal bladder tissue samples. The individual ion images derived from the acquired profiles correlate with standard histological hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained serial sections. The profiles allow us to classify the disease status of the tissue samples with high accuracy as judged by reference histological data. To achieve this, the data from the twenty pairs were divided into a training set and a validation set. Spectra from the tumor and normal regions of each of the tissue sections in the training set were used for orthogonal projection to latent structures (O-PLS) treated partial least-square discriminate analysis (PLS-DA). This predictive model was then validated by using the validation set and showed a 5 % error rate for classification and a misclassification rate of 12 %. It was also used to create synthetic images of the tissue sections showing pixel-by-pixel disease classification of the tissue and these data agreed well with the independent classification that uses histological data by a certified pathologist. This represents the first application of multivariate statistical methods for classification by ambient ionization although these methods have been applied previously to other MS imaging methods. The results are encouraging in terms of the development of a method that could be utilized in a clinical setting through visualization and diagnosis of intact tissue.