The High-Pressure Segmented Quadrupole Collision Cell (HP-SQCC) as an Ion Molecule Reactor

A high-pressure 20-segment quadrupole collision cell (HP-SQCC), which replaces a collision cell in a modified triple-quadrupole mass spectrometer is investigated in this work as an ion-molecule reactor with an inherent heat source. The highest working pressure achievable is 20 mTorr. The 20 quadrupole segments permit superimposition of linear axial electric field over the conventional quadrupole field in the radial direction. The axial and radial fields are employed to control ion temperature. Heat is transferred to the reactants through ion frictional heating. The HP-SQCC utilizes a combination of several physicochemical phenomena and an attempt is made to examine a range of ion-molecule reactions. Due to a sufficiently large number of reactive collisions, the reactor is used to promote sequential exothermic ion-molecule reactions. To characterize the performance of the HP-SQCC, the various ion-molecule reactions between the fragment ions of ferrocene (Cp2Fe), cobaltocene (Cp2Co) and nitrogen, oxygen, water and carbon monoxide are investigated.