Control of laser induced molecular fragmentation of n-propyl benzene using chirped femtosecond laser pulses

We present the effect of chirping a femtosecond laser pulse on the fragmentation of n-propyl benzene. An enhancement of an order of magnitude for the relative yields of and in the case of negatively chirped pulses and in the case of positively chirped pulses with respect to the transform-limited pulse indicates that in some fragmentation channel, coherence of the laser field plays an important role. For the relative yield of all other heavier fragment ions, resulting from the interaction of the intense laser field with the molecule, there is no such enhancement effect with the sign of chirp, within experimental errors. The importance of the laser phase is further reinforced through a direct comparison of the fragmentation results with the second harmonic of the chirped laser pulse with identical bandwidth.     

Explosive desorption and fragmentation of molecular ion from solid fullerene by intense nonresonant femtosecond laser pulses

Desorption of C 60 (+) and its dimer cation was investigated on irradiation with nonresonant femtosecond laser pulses at 1.4 mum. Ionization of solid C 60 revealed strikingly different features, such as the absence of multiply charged molecular ions, the emission of C (+) at low laser intensity, C 2 attachments, delayed ionization, and dimer cation formation, as compared with the gas phase experiments. The large kinetic energy distribution of ions found in this study indicated that the desorption process was mainly driven by an electrostatic mechanism rather than by thermal, photochemical, or volume expansion mechanisms. Singly charged C 60 emission by a Coulomb explosion due to the high density of C 60 (+) is suggested.     

The use of intense femtosecond laser pulses for the fragmentation of chitosan

The use of ultrashort laser pulses for the fragmentation of chitosan was investigated. Femtosecond Ti-saphire laser pulses were focused into a flask containing 1.0% chitosan in 0.1 M acetic acid. The effects of the pulse energy (between 0.1 and 0.82 mJ) and the focal length on the laser-induced fragmentation were followed by viscometry and size exclusion chromatography. The chemical structure and degree of acetylation of chitosan and its fragments were studied using elemental analysis, IR and ¹H NMR spectroscopy. The experimental results showed that (i) Ti-saphire laser irradiation induced chain scission in the chitosan macromolecules, (ii) the chemical structure, including the degree of acetylation, did not change significantly upon laser irradiation, (iii) the number of chain scission dependence on laser energy suggests that fragmentation was a two-photon process, and (iv) at constant pulse energy, the molecular weight dropped to a minimum as a function of the focal length (between 45 and 330 mm), indicating that the efficiency of fragmentation was very sensitive to the geometry of the laser beam.     

Volumetric intensity dependence on the formation of molecular and atomic ions within a high intensity laser focus

The mechanism of atomic and molecular ionization in intense, ultra-short laser fields is a subject which continues to receive considerable attention. An inherent difficulty with techniques involving the tight focus of a laser beam is the continuous distribution of intensities contained within the focus, which can vary over several orders of magnitude. The present study adopts time of flight mass spectrometry coupled with a high intensity (8 x 10(15) Wcm(-2)), ultra-short (20 fs) pulse laser in order to investigate the ionization and dissociation of the aromatic molecule benzene-d1 (C(6)H(5)D) as a function of intensity within a focused laser beam, by scanning the laser focus in the direction of propagation, while detecting ions produced only in a "thin" slice (400 and 800 microm) of the focus. The resultant TOF mass spectra varies significantly, highlighting the dependence on the range of specific intensities accessed and their volumetric weightings on the ionization/dissociation pathways accessed.     

Controlling the dissociative ionization of ethanol with 800 and 400 nm two-color femtosecond laser pulses

Ethanol molecules were irradiated with a pair of temporally overlapping ultrashort intense laser pulses (10(13)-10(14) Wcm(2)) with different colors of 400 and 800 nm, and the dissociative ionization processes have been investigated. The yield ratio of the C-O bond breaking with respect to the C-C bond breaking was varied in the range of 0.17-0.53 sensitively depending on the delay time between the two laser pulses, and the absolute value of the yield of the C-O bond breaking was found to be increased largely when the Fourier-transform limited 800 nm laser pulse overlaps the stretched 400 nm laser pulse, demonstrating an advantage of the two-color intense laser fields in controlling chemical bond breaking processes.     

Double ionization and Coulomb explosion of the formic acid dimer by intense near-infrared femtosecond laser pulses

Ionization and fragmentation of formic acid dimers (HCOOH)(2) and (DCOOD)(2) by irradiation of femtosecond laser pulses (100 fs, 800 nm, ~1 × 10(14) W/cm(2)) were investigated by time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometry. In the TOF spectra, we observed fragment ions (HCOOH)H(+), (HCOOH)HCOO(+), and H(3)O(+), which were produced via the dissociative ionization of (HCOOH)(2). In addition, we found that the TOF signals of COO(+), HCOO(+), and HCOOH(+) have small but clear side peaks, indicating fragmentation with large kinetic energy release caused by Coulomb explosion. On the basis of the momentum matching among pairs of the side peaks, a Coulomb explosion pathway of the dimer dication, (HCOOH)(2)(2+) → HCOOH(+) + HCOOH(+), was identified with the total kinetic energy release of 3.6 eV. Quantum chemical calculations for energies of (HCOOH)(2)(2+) were also performed, and the kinetic energy release of the metastable dication was estimated to be 3.40 eV, showing good agreement with the observation. COO(+) and HCOO(+) signals with kinetic energies of 1.4 eV were tentatively assigned to be fragment ions through Coulomb explosion occurring after the elimination of a hydrogen atom or molecule from (HCOOH)(2)(2+). The present observation demonstrated that the formic acid dimer could be doubly ionized prior to hydrogen bond breaking by intense femtosecond laser fields.     

Production and fragmentation of multiply charged ions in 'electron-free' matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization

An unusually large fraction of multiply charged ions is observed in 'electron-free' matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI). Here we investigate how the yield of multiply charged ions depends on experimental parameters in MALDI. It is found to increase if measures are taken to limit the number of electrons in the plume, for example, by using non-metallic MALDI targets or low laser pulse energies. The ionization energy of the matrix is another important parameter that affects the yield of multiply charged ions: matrices with high ionization energies lead to greater intensities of multiply charged ions. It is furthermore proposed that some of the fragment ions observed in MALDI are due to reactions of analyte with electrons in the plume. The possibility of electron capture dissociation of multiply charged ions produced by MALDI is shown.     

Differentiation of isomeric photomodified oligodeoxynucleotides by fragmentation of ions produced by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization and electrospray ionization

UV irradiation of oligodeoxynucleotides at 254 nm generates several different types of DNA photoproducts, including cis-syn cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers, pyrimidine[6-4] pyrimidone photoproducts and their Dewar valence isomers, and thymine-adenine photoproducts (TA*). Studies of photoproducts in oligodeoxynucleotides require the development of suitable structure determination methods such as mass spectrometry. In an earlier study (Vollmer et al. Int. J. Mass Spectrom. Ion Processes 1997, 165/166, 487-496), we showed that fast atom bombardment and tandem sector mass spectrometry can be used to locate the site of photomodification and identify most of the photoproducts of d(TATTAT). One goal of the present research was to expand the method to the more sensitive electrospray ionization (ESI) and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) methods. A second goal was to test the generality of the methods by investigating not only the photoproducts of d(TATTAT) but also those of three other oligodeoxynucleotides, d(GTATTAT), d(GGCTATAA), and d(AATTAA). The photoproducts of these sequences were separated by HPLC and gave characteristic fragment ions in postsource decompositions of MALDI-produced ions and collisionally activated decompositions of ESI-produced ions.     

Circular dichroism in the photoelectron angular distributions of camphor and fenchone from multiphoton ionization with femtosecond laser pulses

Shine a light: a circular dichroism effect in the ±10?% regime on randomly oriented chiral molecules in the gas phase is demonstrated. The signal is derived from images of photoelectron angular distributions produced by resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization and allows the enantiomers to be distinguished. To date, this effect could only be generated with a synchrotron source. The new tabletop laser-based approach will make this approach far more accessible.     

Multiphoton ionization and fragmentation study of acetone at XeCl excimer laser radiation

Multiphoton ionization and fragmentation of the acetone molecule at 308 nm laser radiation are studied using diffuse molecular beam and multiphoton ionization mass spectroscopy. It is found that the ion peaks of acetone do not appear at m/e = 58, but only at m/e = 15 and 43, corresponding respectively to the two neutral fragments CH₃ and CH₃CO generated by the photodissociation of acetone. The intensities of these ions are proportional to the 3.6th and 3.0th power of the laser intensity, respectively.     

Effects of ionization mode on charge-site-remote and related fragmentation reactions of long-chain quaternary ammonium ions

Comparison of collisionally activated fragment spectra of long-chain quaternary ammonium ions, formed by liquid-assisted secondary ion mass spectrometry (LSIMS) and electrospray ionization (ESI), shows the latter are dominated by radical cations while the former yield mainly even-electron charge-site-remote (CSR) fragments, similar to the report for different precursors by Cheng et al., J. Am. Soc. Mass Spectrom. 1998, 9, 840. Here, mixed-site fragmentation products (formal loss of a radical directly bonded to the nitrogen plus a radical derived from the long chain) are of comparable importance for both ionization techniques. These observations are difficult to understand if the CSR ions are formed by a concerted rearrangement-elimination reaction, since precollision internal energies of the ESI ions are much lower than those of the ions from LSIMS. Alternatively, if one discards the concerted mechanism for high-energy CA, and assumes that the even-electron fragments are predominantly formed via homolytic bond cleavage, the colder radical cations from ESI survive to the detector while the more energized counterparts from LSIMS preferentially lose a hydrogen atom to yield the CSR ions, as proposed by Wysocki and Ross (Int. J. Mass Spectrom. Ion Processes 1991, 104, 179). The present work also attempts to reconcile discrepancies involving critical energies and known structures for neutral fragments.     

Comparison of the effects of visible femtosecond laser pulses and continuous wave laser radiation of low average intensity on the clonogenicity of Escherichia coli.

To evaluate the contribution of local pulsed heating of light-absorbing microregions to biochemical activity, irradiation of Escherichia coli was carried out using femtosecond laser pulses (λ = 620 nm, τ_p=3 × 10⁻¹³ s, f_p = 0.5 Hz, E_p = 1.1 × 10⁻³J cm⁻², I_av = 5.5 × 10⁻⁴ W cm⁻², I_p = 10⁹ W cm⁻²) and continuous wave (CW) laser radiation (λ = 632.8 nm, I = 1.3 W cm⁻²). The irradiation dose required to produce a similar biological effect (a 160%–190% increase in the clonogenic activity of the irradiated cells compared with the non-irradiated controls) is a factor of about 10³ lower for pulsed radiation than for CW radiation (3.3 × 10⁻¹ and 7.8 × 10² J cm⁻² respectively). The minimum size of the microregions transiently heated on irradiation with femtosecond laser pulses is estimated to be about 10 Å, which corresponds to the size of the chromophores of hypothetical primary photoacceptors—respiratory chain components.     

On the mechanism of ion formation from the aqueous solutions irradiated with 3 microm IR laser pulses under atmospheric pressure

The mechanism of atmospheric pressure (AP) laser ionization of water and water/glycerol liquid samples at a 3-microm wavelength is studied experimentally. For the ion desorption, an in-house built Yb : YAG-pumped optical parametric oscillator (OPO) infrared (IR) laser has been coupled with AP MALDI ion source interfaced to an ion trap mass spectrometer (MS). It has been shown that water is primarily responsible for ion generation in water/glycerol samples, while glycerol increases the solution viscosity and decreases the water evaporation rate and sample losses. In contrast to AP UV-MALDI, the electric field in the case of AP IR-MALDI does not assist in ion production. It was found that the absence of the electrical field provides the optimum ionization condition both for water and water/glycerol liquid samples at the 3-microm laser irradiation. A two-stage ion formation mechanism, which includes the initial emission of microdroplets and release of molecular ions at the second stage, can explain the experimentally observed ion signal dependencies upon the voltage applied between MS inlet and the MALDI sample plate. Postionization using additional corona discharge APCI increases the observed signal by approximately 50%, which indicates that some portion of the analyte is desorbed in the form of neutral molecules.     

The mechanism of formation and specifics of fragmentation for negative molecular ions of allylsilanes

The processes of formation of negative ions by allylsilane molecules were studied by resonanceelectron-capture mass spectrometry, and photoelectron spectra of these compounds were obtained. It was experimentally found that the overwhelming majority of fragment negative ions are produced in the energy range ～6–10 eV. It was shown that the resonance-electron-capture mass spectrum is almost entirely described by one or two series of intershell resonances due to excitation of an electron successively from several higher occupied orbitals to the lower unoccupied π molecular orbital.     

Comparison of the effects of visible femtosecond laser pulses and continuous wave laser radiation of low average intensity on the clonogenicity of Escherichia coli

To evaluate the contribution of local pulsed heating of light-absorbing microregions to biochemical activity, irradiation of Escherichia coli was carried out using femtosecond laser pulses (λ = 620 nm, τ_p=3 × 10⁻¹³ s, f_p = 0.5 Hz, E_p = 1.1 × 10⁻³J cm⁻², I_av = 5.5 × 10⁻⁴ W cm⁻², I_p = 10⁹ W cm⁻²) and continuous wave (CW) laser radiation (λ = 632.8 nm, I = 1.3 W cm⁻²). The irradiation dose required to produce a similar biological effect (a 160%–190% increase in the clonogenic activity of the irradiated cells compared with the non-irradiated controls) is a factor of about 10³ lower for pulsed radiation than for CW radiation (3.3 × 10⁻¹ and 7.8 × 10² J cm⁻² respectively). The minimum size of the microregions transiently heated on irradiation with femtosecond laser pulses is estimated to be about 10 Å, which corresponds to the size of the chromophores of hypothetical primary photoacceptors—respiratory chain components.     

On the limitations of adiabatic population transfer between molecular electronic states induced by intense femtosecond laser pulses

The possibility to perform a stimulated Raman adiabatic passage process in molecules on the ultrafast time scale is investigated theoretically. Motivated by recent experiments, the mid R:B<--mid R:X electronic transitions in molecular iodine are studied as a prototype example with the goal to selectively induce a population transfer employing two intense and time-delayed ultrashort laser pulses and different coupling schemes. For the purpose of interpretation, the coupled multilevel vibronic problem is reduced to a quasi-three-level system by averaging over the vibrational degree of freedom. It is shown that the vibrational dynamics becomes essential at high field intensities. Considering a 2-dimensional parameter space (intensity and delay time of the femtosecond laser pulses), a strong-field control landscape is constructed.     

Production and fragmentation of negative ions from neutral N-linked carbohydrates ionized by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization

Although negative ion fragmentation mass spectra of neutral N-linked carbohydrates (those attached to Asn in glycoproteins) provide much more structural information than spectra recorded in positive ion mode, neutral carbohydrates are reluctant to form negative ions by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) unless ionized from specific matrices such as nor-harmane or adducted with anions such as chloride. This paper reports the results of experiments to optimize negative ion formation from adducts of N-linked glycans with respect to ion abundance and fragment ion production. The best results were obtained with 2,4,6-trihydroxyacetophenone (THAP) as the matrix with added ammonium nitrate as the salt providing the anion. This approach is demonstrated to be applicable for a wide range of N-linked glycan structures. Phosphate adducts, analogous to those that are usually encountered in electrospray spectra from N-glycans released by protein N-glycosidase F, were produced by addition of ammonium phosphate to the matrix but in relatively low yield allowing competitive ionization of endogenous anionic compounds leading to complex spectra. Fragmentation of the nitrate adducts, which were formed in higher yield, generally paralleled that seen by collision-induced dissociation following ionization by electrospray, with the first stage of the dissociation being the elimination of the nitrate with a proton from one of the hydroxyl groups of the sugar. The spectra of the resulting [M-H](-) species displayed very specific fragment ions, mainly cross-ring and C-type glycosidic cleavage products, that revealed more structural (linkage and branching) information of the compounds than the mainly glycosidic cleavage products that dominated the positive ion spectra.     

Formation of molecular halide ions from alkyl-halide clusters irradiated by ps and fs laser pulses

We report on the interaction of alkyl-halide clusters with 35 ps and 20 fs laser pulses at λ = 266, 532, and 1064 nm and 400 and 800 nm, respectively. Particularly, we examine by means of time-of-flight mass spectrometry the intracluster photochemical processes, which give rise to the formation of molecular halogen ions. The efficiency of molecular halogen ion formation is found to depend strongly on the laser wavelength and pulse duration. The ionization/excitation schemes involve in both cases the multiphoton absorption by the clusters and the combined action of the laser and the intracluster electric field. Intracluster energy transfer processes seem to have a significant contribution to the molecular halogen ion formation in the ps domain, while in the fs region, this is probably facilitated by a rescattering process and/or by photon absorption. A physical mechanism for the interpretation of our experimental results is proposed.     

UV laser removal of varnish on tempera paints with nanosecond and femtosecond pulses

Two laser cleaning approaches based on ablation by ultraviolet laser pulses of femtosecond (fs) and nanosecond (ns) durations for the removal of shellac varnish from egg-yolk based tempera paints are investigated. Laser irradiation effects, induced on the varnish layer and on the underlying temperas by multiple pulses in the fs domain at 398 and 265 nm and single pulses in the ns domain at 213 nm, were examined following a spectroanalytical approach. By using optical microscopy, colorimetry and laser induced fluorescence it was found that irradiation of the varnished temperas with fs pulses changes the texture of the varnish surface and results in degradation of the underlying coloured paint. In contrast, operating with pulses of 15 ns at the highly absorbed wavelength of 213 nm, controlled micrometric layer removal of the varnish is possible without noticeable modification of the coloured temperas. These results widen the choice of laser conditions for painting restoration.