Ion Bombardment MS: A Sensitive Probe of Chemical Reactions Occurring at the Surface of Organic Solids

Abstract

Organic chemical reactions occurring in the solid state or at a gas-solid interface are of interest in a number of fields including solid state polymerization and other chemical syntheses, the long-term stability of drugs, the degradation of plastics, catalysis, and a range of analytical chemical procedures. We have recently investigated the use of energetic heavy ion bombardment mass spectrometry as a new technique for monitoring microscale chemical reactions in films of nonvolatile organic solids with thicknesses ranging from submono-layers to ~10³ molecular layers. The investigations were performed using a ²⁵²Cf fission fragment induced ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer [1] (bombardment with ~100 Mev fission fragments) and a pulsed ion bombardment time-of-flight mass spectrometer [2] (bombardment with ~30 keV ions), both constructed at the Rockefeller University.