Tandem reactions basic principles

Principles and Characteristics Analytical multistage mass spectrometry (MSn) relies on the ability to activate and dissociate ions generated in the ion source in order to identify or obtain structural information about an unknown compound and to analyse mixtures by exploiting two or more mass-separating steps. A basic instrument for the currently most used form, tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS), consists of a combination of two mass analysers with a reaction region between them. While a variety of instrument set-ups can be used in MS/MS, there is a single basic concept involved the measurement of the m/z of ions before and after a reaction in the mass spectrometer the reaction involves a change in mass and can be represented as ... 

---