Thermally induced dissociation of ions from electrospray mass spectrometry

The thermally induced dissociation (TID) of inos at near atmospheric pressure, followed by their mass spectraometric analysis, is demonstrated. The TID occurs in a heated metal capillary interface, and should be broadly applicable to any system capable of producing ions at high pressure. The heated capillary provides a reaction vessel , potentially very useful for kinetic and mechanistic studies of ions. The technique has been applied to the fragmentation of large multiply charged ions from an electrospray ionization source. Preliminary results show that stability for multiply protonated petide or protein molecules in inversely related to its charge.