An evaluation of the spectral properties of nerve agents for laser ionization mass spectrometry.

Excitation energies, oscillator strengths, and vacuum-ultraviolet/deep-ultraviolet absorption spectra were calculated for nerve agents, such as sarin, soman, VX, tabun, mustard gas, and analogs. We used time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) methods that included B3LYP combined with basis sets of cc-pVDZ and cc-pVTZ, and ωB97XD with cc-pVTZ. The vertical ionization energies were also calculated for these compounds, in order to collect additional information relative to the optimal pathways for multiphoton ionization in mass spectrometry.