Ion-Molecule Clustering in Differential Mobility Spectrometry: Lessons Learned from Tetraalkylammonium Cations and their Isomers

Differential mobility spectrometry (DMS) can distinguish ions based upon the differences in their high- and low-field ion mobilities as they experience the asymmetric waveform applied to the DMS cell. These mobilities are known to be influenced by the ions' structure, m/z, and charge distribution (i.e., resonance structures) within the ions themselves, as well as by the gas-phase environment of the DMS cell. While these associations have been developed over time through empirical observations, the exact role of ion structures or their interactions with clustering molecules remains generally unknown. In this study, that relationship is explored by observing the DMS behaviors of a series of tetraalkylammonium ions as a function of their structures and the gas-phase environment of the DMS cell. To support the DMS experiments, the basin-hopping search strategy was employed to identify candidate cluster structures for density functional theory treatment. More than a million cluster structures distributed across 72 different ion-molecule cluster systems were sampled to determine global minimum structures and cluster binding energies. This joint computational and experimental approach suggests that cluster geometry, in particular ion-molecule intermolecular separation, plays a critical role in DMS.