6533b82ffe1ef96bd129599e

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Metastable ion studies. 4—mass spectral fragmentation and isomerization in the esters of chlorinated propenoic acids

subject

description

Metastable peaks have been used to study the fragmentation pathways of the methyl and trideuteriomethyl chloropropenoates and chloromethyl propenoate. The molecular ion peaks of the unsaturated esters are more intense than those of the saturated esters, α-Cleavage, [MOCH3]+, produces the base peak in almost all compounds, the relative abundances of the additional peaks being low for chloromethyl propenoate. The losses of H2O, CH3. and COOH. indicate the isomerization of some ionized chloro esters to the chlorinated 2-butenoic acid molecular ions. An intense loss of H2O observed for methyl 2-chloropropenoate indicates its most facile isomerization, [ester]+˙ → [acid]+˙, whereas the isomerization in methyl trichloropropenoate could not be observed. The molecular ion of chloromethyl propenoate, however, also seems to partly rearrange to the chlorinated 3-butenoic acid ion, since the first field free region metastable peak shows a weak loss of CO. The new reaction pathways, i.e. the losses of CHO˙, CH2O and CH2CO from ionized chloromethyl propenoate, were detected.