Mass Spectrometry
Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical method that ionizes substance species and sorts the particles dependent on their mass-to-charge proportion. In simpler terms, a mass spectrum estimates the masses within a sample. Mass spectrometry is used in many different fields and is applied to pure samples as well as complex mixtures.A mass spectrum is a plot of the ion signal as a function of the mass-to-charge ratio. Elemental or isotopic signature of a sample, the masses of particles and of molecules, and to elucidate the chemical structures of molecules and other chemical compounds are determined by using Mass Spectrum.
In a common MS method, an example, which may be solid, liquid, or gas, is ionized, for example by bombarding it with electrons. This may make a portion of the sample molecules to break into charged fragments. These particles are then isolated by their mass-to-charge ratio, typically by accelerating them and exposing them to an electric or magnetic field: ions of a similar mass-to-charge ratio will experience a same amount of deflection. The ions are detected by a mechanism capable of detecting charged particles, for example, an electron multiplier. Results are shown as spectra of the relative abundance of detected ions as a function of the mass-to-charge ratio.
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