Splitting Peaks Possible Causes

A void volume in the column, or a partially blocked frit can possibly cause double or split peaks. In case that only one peak is a doublet, then co-eluting compounds may be present. 

Figure 10.8. An example of chromatographic peak splitting possibly caused by column voiding.

One also sees that at room temperature the two peaks of the quadru-pole split pattern are different in intensity. This difference disappears at 77°K. It is an example of what is known as the Gordanskii effect 10) and is caused by the fact that the amplitude of vibration is different, parallel to the surface and normal to the surface, so that the effective resonant fraction is different for the two halves of the quadrupole splitting. This effect has been extensively studied by the Russians. In a recent paper, Suzdalev and others report a study of tin in the surface of silica gel 18), They put calcium ions in the surface of silica gel, then replaced them with divalent tin by ion exchange. The result was a mixture of stannous and stannic ions, and of course, the use of the Mossbauer effect made it possible to determine accurately the relative amounts of the two. They studied the amplitude of vibration of the two kinds of atoms and found, for example, for the stannous ions, the r.m.s. amplitude of vibration parallel to the surface was 0.07 A., and the r.m.s. amplitude of vibration perpendicular to the surface was about twice as great—about 0.13 A. Karasev and others have also worked on the chemistry of adsorbed... 

The observations that there is an "optimum" orbit size and that peaks split for orbits not too much larger than the optimum orbit suggest that the optimum orbit occurs because of special circumstances. One possible circumstance is a coincidence of frequencies for ions with low and high z-mode amplitudes so that if there are mass discriminating differences in the way the ions populate the trap or in the way ions are excited, then systematic mass measurement errors can be expected. Excitation of the cyclotron mode does produce a spread in cyclotron radii, and mass discriminating z-mode excitation is discussed elsewhere in this chapter. Thus, frequency variations that cause systematic mass errors are due in part to trap field inhomogeneities. These effects are evident at low ion populations and may be due in part to excitation induced ion cloud deformation which increases with ion number. 

Mossbauer spectroscopy also provides structural information.97-100 In particular it is possible to deduce from peak asymmetry the separate appearance of surface atoms as size is decreased they cause an increase in intensity of quadrupole splitting, and two quadropole components indicate two kinds of surface atoms.97 Au1 and Au111 species are also sometimes recognised,99 and sometimes not.98... 

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