Fragmentation of adenine and uracyl molecules through electron captures in collisions with ions

The time-of-flight mass spectrometry method is used to study processes occurring when 36-keV multiply charged Ar ions (Ar⁶⁺) capture electrons from adenine and uracyl molecules. Adenine and uracyl constitute one of two base pairs entering into the RNA composition. The fragmentation scheme of resulting molecular ions is derived by analyzing correlations between the detection times of all fragment ions. Fragmentation patterns for molecular ions resulting from molecule ionization by photons, electrons, protons, and multiply charged ions are compared.