Fragments to Function: Building Molecules with Mass Spectrometry
2025-06-09
A new review published in Nature Reviews Chemistry reveals how mass spectrometry—traditionally used to analyze molecules—can now be harnessed to make them.
Researchers from Purdue University and collaborators in Germany report that fragment ions, once considered fleeting and analytically useful but chemically inaccessible, can be deposited on surfaces to create entirely new compounds.
The article, led by Julia Laskin, William F. and Patty J. Miller Professor of Chemistry, and Jonas Warneke, Professor for Physical Chemistry of Reactive Intermediates at Leipzig University, highlights a suite of advances in preparative mass spectrometry instrumentation that allows scientists to isolate, control, and react gas-phase ions on solid surfaces with unprecedented precision.
“Ions produced in mass spectrometers are often seen as elusive, transient species,” said Warneke. “But with the right tools, we can turn these short-lived fragments into powerful reagents for synthesizing entirely new molecular architectures. Fragment ions are like hidden treasure—we’ve been generating them routinely in mass spectrometry for decades, but only recently realized they could be harnessed for chemical synthesis.”
The technique, known as ion soft landing, allows researchers to generate these unusual fragment ions and deposit them onto surfaces, where they undergo selective—and often unexpected—chemical reactions. These reactions can produce novel materials, including nanoclusters and their assemblies, interfacial catalysts, and coordination polymers decorated with unusual functional groups, many of which are difficult or impossible to prepare using traditional wet chemistry.
“This is a transformative step for synthetic chemistry,” said Laskin. “We are no longer limited to the classical rules of solution-phase reactivity. Ion soft landing opens a new dimension of control, allowing us to manipulate charged species with atomic precision and build functional molecular systems one ion at a time.”
The review showcases examples ranging from highly reactive boron cluster anions that form carbon–boron bonds on contact, to undercoordinated metal clusters that selectively dimerize into superatomic structures. These findings could impact fields as diverse as quantum materials, catalysis, nanoelectronics, and targeted drug delivery.
Purdue researchers Hugo Y. Samayoa-Oviedo and Xilai Li, both members of Laskin’s lab, were co-authors of the study with research funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) under grant FA9550-23-1-0137.
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Media contact: Steve Scherer, College of Science Communications, scherer@purdue.edu