Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Design

Mass spectrometry

Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique that's used to measure the mass-to-charge ratio of ions A mass spectrum is a plot of the ion signal as a function of the mass-to-charge ratio. These spectra are used to determine the basic or isotopic signature of a sample, the masses of particles and of molecules, and to elucidate the chemical identity or structure of molecules and other chemical compounds. There are four stages in a mass spectrometer which we need to study, these are – ionization, acceleration, deflection, and detection.  Mass spectrometry is employed in many diverse fields and is applied to pure samples also as complex mixtures.