Various unknown organic compounds were separated and characterized utilizing the combined techniques of gas chromatography (GC) and ion trap mass spectrometry(MS). Standard solutions GC-MS is a combined technique, first vaporizing the sample into the column of a gas chromatograph, which separates the components of a sample based upon column affinity. Components which have the most molecular attraction to the column will spend more time traveling through it. Each component has a unique electronic structure which leads to varying retention time (RT) within the column. The purified constituents will then travel into the MS portion of the instrument.
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Introduction.
Molecules with low-lying (low energy) conjugated pi electron systems tend to absorb electromagnetic radiation in the visible region, between 390 nm and 700nm. Each unique system will absorb characteristic wavelengths of radiation, which are complementary to the difference in electronic manifold energies.
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For absorption to occur, the energy of the exciting photon must exactly match the energy difference between the ground state and an excited state of the absorbing species.1.
When a photon(s) is absorbed by an electronic system, an electron(s) goes from a lower energy orbital and vibrational system to a higher, less-stable one. Once this energy is absorbed, one of several pathways of relaxation, disassociation or dissipation can occur, which will bring the electron back to its ground state. Collisional deactivation results from intermolecular impact, where the energy of incident absorption is transferred to adjacent molecules this process does not result in the emission of any photons and is thereby not detectable by optical sensors. When the photodissociation pathway occurs, the molecule is decomposed completely by the incident radiation, due to a bond or several bonds breaking. The energy absorbed by the manifold will cause constituent nuclei to reach the critical bond distance and the attractive force effectively goes to zero.
