The remarkable dissociation chemistry of 2-aminoxyethanol ions NH2OCH2CH2OH+studied by experiment and theory

Low-energy 2-aminoxyethanol molecular ions NH2OCH2CH2OH+ exhibit a surprisingly rich gas-phase ion chemistry. They spontaneously undergo five major dissociations in the microsecond timeframe, yielding ions of m/z 61, 60, 46, 32 and 18. Our tandem mass spectrometry experiments indicate that these reactions correspond to the generation of HOCH2CH(OH)+ (protonated glycolaldehyde), HOCH2C(O)H+ (ionized glycolaldehyde), HC(OH)NH2+ (protonated formamide), CH2OH2+ (the methylene oxonium ion) and NH4+. A mechanistic analysis of these processes using the CBS-QB3 model chemistry shows that the molecular ions undergo a 1,4-H shift followed by a facile isomerization into the ion–molecule complex [HOCH2C(O)H+][NH3] which acts as the reacting configuration for the five exothermic dissociation processes. Analysis of the D-labelled isotopomer ND2OCH2CH2OD+, in conjunction with our computational results, shows that proton-transport catalysis may be responsible for the partial conversion of the m/z 60 glycolaldehyde ions into the more stable 1,2-dihydroxyethene isomer HOC(H)C(H)OH+.