Substituent effects in mass spectra of monosubstituted benzils

The mass spectra of a series of thirteen m- and p-substituted benzils have been determined at several ionising voltages below 20 eV and at 70 eV. At ionising voltages up to 5 eV above the ionisation potentials the benzil molecular ions decompose entirely by two pathways to give substituted and unsubstituted benzoyl ions. Fractional intensities of the molecular ion (F_M), substituted (F_X) and unsubstituted (F_H) benzoyl ions were obtained for each benzil as a function of energy from measured ionisation efficiency curves, and ionisation and appearance potentials for all major ions determined from the ionisation efficiency curves by a semilogarithmic method. Various correlations of ion intensity and energy parameters with δ⁺ and δ constants are examined; these are generally poor. Fair correlations are obtained between log (F_X/F_H) or (AP – AP) and δ or δ⁺, and these are interpreted in terms of the expected effect of substituents on the stabilities of the product ions in the decompositions. A good correlation is observed between log (F_X/F_H) and AP · AP; this suggests that substituents affect F_X/F_H mainly by changing the activation energies for the competing decompositions of the molecular ions. The competitive shift has a marked effect on these appearance potentials so that in this system AP – IP is not a good measure of the activation energy for the primary decompositions.