Lifetimes and stabilities of familiar explosive molecular adduct complexes during ion mobility measurements.

Trapped ion mobility spectrometry coupled to mass spectrometry (TIMS-MS) was utilized for the separation and identification of familiar explosives in complex mixtures. For the first time, molecular adduct complex lifetimes, relative stability, binding energies and candidate structures are reported for familiar explosives. Experimental and theoretical results showed that the adduct size and reactivity, complex binding energy and the explosive structure tailor the stability of the molecular adduct complex. The flexibility of TIMS to adapt the mobility separation as a function of the molecular adduct complex stability (i.e., short or long IMS experiments/low or high IMS resolution) permits targeted measurements of explosives in complex mixtures with high confidence levels.