Ultraviolet Photodissociation

Recent developments have led to significantly increased interest in coupling ultraviolet lasers with mass spectrometers to carry out photodissociation experiments (UVPD). In fact, an instrument is now commercially available from Thermo with a UVPD option. UV photons offer many capabilities that differ from IR photons or other modes of activation such as collisions with background gas. In particular, our lab is interested in the bond-specific cleavage that UVPD affords by accessing dissociative electronic excited states. This chemistry can be used to break specific bonds both for analytical identification and for structural characterization with the radical site that is created by the homolytic cleavage that results. We continue to develop novel applications of UVPD, further understand mechanisms related to UVPD, and explore combinations of UVPD with other technologies. In particular, we are interested in using photons to distinguish molecules that mass spectrometry typically struggles with, isomers, which have unique structures and properties but identical masses.