A general approach to the screening and confirmation of tryptamines and phenethylamines by mass spectral fragmentation.
Talanta January 15, 2008 Bo-Hong Chen, Ju-Tsung Liu, Wen-Xiong Chen et al. 32 citations
Mass spectrometry methods—GC-EI/MS, LC-ESI/MS, and MALDI/TOFMS—were compared for analyzing 13 tryptamine and phenethylamine compounds, including AMT, DMT, 5-MeO-AMT, DET, DPT, DBT, DIPT, 5-MeO-DMT, 5-MeO-DIPT, methamphetamine, 3,4-MDA, 3,4-MDMA, and MBDB. Parent ions were difficult to obtain by GC/MS, but protonated molecular ions were clearly observed by ESI/MS and MALDI/TOFMS. Two major characteristic fragmentations occurred: alpha-cleavage (producing [3-vinylindole]+) and beta-cleavage (producing [CH2N(+)R(N1)R(N2)]). With ESI, alpha-cleavage was the major process; with MALDI, beta-cleavage dominated. The ionization efficiency and fragments from either cleavage depended on the degree of alkylation of the side chain nitrogen.