Ion spectroscopy of reaction intermediates

The combination of mass spectrometry, infrared action spectroscopy and quantum-chemical calculations provides a great tool for the study of the structures, properties and reactivities of molecules in the gas phase. This thesis is divided into two main parts. The first part reviews some of the experimental (ESI-MS, ion spectroscopy) and theoretical (DFT) methods used in this thesis and gives a brief description on instrumentation. Second part is presenting four practical applications of gas phase studies in organic and organometallic chemistry: (1) Describing the influence of two functional groups of para-aminophenol on the protonation site. (2) Presenting how the structure and conformation of diethylmalonate is affected by the coordination with silver and gold. (3) Showing the possibility to distinguish between the isobaric complexes and identifying the key intermediates of ruthenium catalyzed C-C coupling. (4) Discussing the possible use of He-tagging infrared spectra not only for structure determination but also for the benchmarking of DFT methods