Gas chromatographic—mass spectrometric studies of long chain hydroxy acids.—III.1 The mass spectra of the methyl esters trimethylsilyl ethers of aliphatic hydroxy acids. A facile method of double bond location

Trimethylsilylation has proved to be extremely useful in the gas chromatography and the mass spectrometry of hydroxy acid methyl esters. The characteristic mass spectral fragmentation patterns have shown these derivatives to be superior in some respects to others for structural elucidation; in particular, hydroxylation followed by trimethylsilylation provides a useful method of double bond location in unsaturated fatty acid esters.

1 A preliminary presentation of this method has been given by G. Eglinton at the Lecture etting in Combined Gas Chromatography—Mass Spectrometry at the school of Pharmacy, London, August 9, 1967. It has come to the authors' attention that this method simultaneously developed by Dr. P. Capella, Institute di Industria Agrarie, University of Bologna, Italy^1c (P. Capella and C. M. Zorzut, Anal. Chem. 41 , 1458 (1968).)