Use of CI-MS for the determination of deuterium content in hydrocarbons

Chemical-ionization mass spectrometry (CI-MS) has both adavantages and disadvantages over electron-impact mass spectrometry (EI-MS) in the measurement of deuterium distributions in hydrocarbons. The advantage that CI maintains over EI is that, in many instances, only a small amount of fragmentation is generated in the ionization process, resulting in simpler interpretation of the spectra. The authors report on the spectra generated by a CI process that abstracts a hydrogen (or deuterium) atom. Although some information is lost in the abstraction process, almost complete recovery can be made mathematically so that useful information may be obtained from this technique