Sites of protonation and unimolecular fragmentation of protonated N-hydroxyphthalimide in the gas phase

The low energy collision-induced dissociation, linked scan techniques and isotopic labeling experiment were used to investigate the unimolecular fragmentation of protonated N-hydroxyphthalimide under electron impact and chemical ionization conditions. It was found that this compound shows an unusual reactivity towards protonation. Two possible sites of protonation have been proposed to explain the corresponding fragmentation processes, one is that the protonation takes place on the oxygen atom of hydroxyl group, resulting in the loss of water and the other is the formation of an intermediary proton-bound complex in the fragmentation process, giving rise to the fragment ions of m/z 133 and m/z 135. The results show both cases are coexistence in the fragmentations of protonated N-hydroxyphthalimide, and the unimolecular fragmentation pathways are available.