When molecules go through a mass spectrometer, some of them arrive intact at the detector, but many of them break into pieces in a variety of different ways. Removal of electrons is effected through a...When molecules go through a mass spectrometer, some of them arrive intact at the detector, but many of them break into pieces in a variety of different ways. Removal of electrons is effected through a collision, usually with a high-energy electron. During that collision, energy is transferred from the high-energy electron to the molecule, and that energy has to go somewhere. Part of it gets partitioned into various bond vibrations that may break to form fragment ions.
