Chemistry

Abstracts

Dr. Jon Amster, UGA: Fourier Transform Mass Spectrometry and It's Bioanalytical Applications

Mass spectrometry currently plays a significant role in biological analysis due to its high sensitivity (fmol or lower detection limits), speed of analysis, applicability to high molecular weight molecules, as well as its capability to interface directly to separation methods such as liquid chromatography or capillary electrophoresis. Proteins, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, and complex lipids are routinely analyzed by mass spectrometry. Among the many types of mass spectrometers that are used for biological analysis, Fourier transform mass spectrometry stands out because of its extraordinarily high mass resolution, high accuracy, and capability for structure analysis by tandem mass spectrometry. This seminar will introduce the audience to the basic principles of Fourier transform mass spectrometry and will illustrate its powerful capabilities by showing applications to protein and carbohydrate analysis from the speaker's laboratory

Dr. Brent Gunnoe, UVA: Development of Homogeneous Catalysts for the Conversion of C-H Bonds

Greater than 90% of materials produced by the chemistry industry are derived from a handful of basic hydrocarbon building blocks. Typically, synthetic methods for the conversion of these compounds into higher value functionalized materials are capital and energy intensive. With rising demand for fossil resources, the development of new catalyst technologies for the selective and efficient functionalization of simple hydrocarbons is of increasing importance. The presentation will focus on fundamental studies of metal-mediated activation of C-H bonds including incorporation into catalytic cycles and opportunities for enhanced selectivity of large-scale commodity chemical processes.

Dr. Liguo Song, UTK: Liquid chromatography atmospheric pressure photoionization mass spectrometry: trace level analysis of organic explosives

It is well known that gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC/MS) favors the analysis of volatile and thermally stable compounds. On the other hand, liquid chromatography electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (LC/ESI-MS) and liquid chromatography atmospheric chemical ionization mass spectrometry (LC/APCI-MS) favor the analysis of compounds with solution acid-base chemistry. Therefore, it is challenging to analyze thermally labile neutral compounds, e.g. organic explosives. Recently, liquid chromatography atmospheric pressure photoionization (LC/APPI-MS) has been demonstrated to be able to ionize both polar and non-polar compounds. Our contribution in this research field is to use LC/ negative ion-APPI-MS (LC/NI-APPI-MS) for the analysis of neutral compounds. By using organic explosives as an example, we have demonstrated that LC/NI-APPI-MS can be one order or two orders magnitude more sensitive than GC/NICI-MS and LC/NI-APCI-MS, respectively. We anticipate that LC/NI-APPI-MS is also going to provide superb sensitivity in the analysis of other neutral compounds such as fullerenes, halogenated compounds, nitrated compounds, and their corresponding derivatives of other compounds.