Zum Mechanismus massenspektrometrischer Fragmentierungsreaktionen: XIII—Einfluß der Dissoziationsenergie auf intramolekulare aromatische Substitutionen in den Molekül-Ionen von N,N-Dimethyl-N′-phenylformamidinen

The effect of the dissociation energy of the C? X bond (X = H, F, Cl, Br, I) on the formation of benzimidazolium ions (b) by elimination of X from the molecular ions of ortho-substituted N,N-dimethyl-N′-phenylformamidines (I to V) has been investigated. No simple relation is observed between the intensities of ions b and the dissociation energy. Furthermore, the appearance potentials of ions b are not greatly affected by the dissociation energy, although differences of about 2.5 eV are expected for a simple cleavage reaction. The behaviour of the molecular ions of I to V is in accord with a two step addition-dissociation mechanism [M]⁺· → a → b, and the highest activation energy is required in the first addition step. Similar mechanisms are known for aromatic substitution reactions in the condensed phase, but have not been observed for mass spectrometric fragmentations. The detection of additional kinetic energy T in the reaction products by an analysis of the metastable transitions [M]⁺· → b corroborates the proposed mechanism.