Synthesizing New Molecules in the Condensed Phase

Chemists often treat gaseous fragment ions as esoteric chemical species only of interest to analytical mass spectrometry and gas phase ion chemistry. Meanwhile, their potential as building blocks for designing new compounds in the condensed phase remained largely unexplored until recently. In this presentation, preparative mass spectrometry (ion soft-landing) is introduced as a method for small-scale chemical synthesis using gaseous ions. The preparation of new compounds and surface layers using fragment ions deposited from the gas phase is demonstrated. This includes binding of inorganic fragment ions to (bio-)molecules, covalent binding of cluster ions of same polarity on surfaces and binding of unreactive molecules like N2 to reactive fragment ions, which are subsequently “taken out” of the mass spectrometer for further conventional analytics and applications.