MoP-01
REACTIONS OF METAL IONS - UNUSUAL REACTION PROFILES AND THEIR RATIONALISATION
Derek R. Smith, Adriana Dinca, Keith J. Fisher and Gary D. Willett
School of Chemistry, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia 2052
In our studies on the reactions of metal ions (trapped in the ion trap region of an FT-ICR mass spectrometer) with organic molecules we frequently observe the following behaviour. The metal ion concentration, expected to show a simple exponential first order decay with a rate that decreases uniformly with increasing elapsed time, instead initially has a rate that increases with increasing elapsed time and only after about 10-20% reaction moves smoothly into a regime with decreasing rate as elapsed time increases.
In our complimentary studies on the gas phase reactions of the ions formed from combination of the organic molecules with the metal ions referred to above we occasionally observe the following behaviour. The concentration of the organo-metallic complex ion when reacting with an excess of its organic component, at first decreases as elapsed time increases, then increases and finally decreases again.
In both cases the Laplace transform technique is used to analyse proposed reaction schemes. By this means it is demonstrated that quite simple reaction schemes will explain the observed behaviour.