MASS SPECTROMETRIC FRAGMENTATION OF TRIMETHYLSILYL AND RELATED ALKYLSILYL DERIVATIVES

This review describes the mass spectral fragmentation of trimethylsilyl (TMS) and related alkylsilyl derivatives used for preparing samples for analysis, mainly by combined gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The review is divided into three sections. The first section is concerned with the TMS derivatives themselves and describes fragmentation of derivatized alcohols, thiols, amines, ketones, carboxylic acids and bifunctional compounds such as hydroxy- and amino-acids, halo acids and hydroxy ethers. More complex compounds such as glycerides, sphingolipids, carbohydrates, organic phosphates, phosphonates, steroids, vitamin D, cannabinoids, and prostaglandins are discussed next. The second section describes intermolecular reactions of siliconium ions such as the TMS cation and the third section discusses other alkylsilyl derivatives. Among these latter compounds are di- and trialkyl-silyl derivatives, various substituted-alkyldimethylsilyl derivatives such as the tert-butyldimethylsilyl ethers, cyclic silyl derivatives, alkoxysilyl derivatives, and 3-pyridylmethyldimethylsilyl esters used for double bond location in fatty acid spectra. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Mass Spec Rev 0000:1-107, 2019.

Mass spectral fragmentation of trimethylsilylated small molecules

Mass spectrometry-based untargeted metabolomics detects many peaks that cannot be identified. While advances have been made for automatic structure annotations in LC-electrospray-MS/MS, no open source solutions are available for hard electron ionization used in GC-MS. In metabolomics, most compounds bear moieties with acidic protons, for example, amino, hydroxyl, or carboxyl groups. Such functional groups increase the boiling points of metabolites too much for use in GC-MS. Hence, in GC-MS-focused metabolomics, derivatization of these groups is essential and has been employed since the 1960s. Specifically, trimethylsilylation is known as mild and universal method for GC-MS analysis. Here, we comprehensively compile accurate mass fragmentation rules and pathways of trimethylsilylated small molecules from 80 research articles over the past 5 decades, including diagnostic fragment ions, neutral losses, and typical ion ratios, for alcohols, carboxylic acids, amines, amino acids, sugars, steroids, thiols, and phosphates. These fragmentation rules were subsequently validated by specificity and sensitivity assessments using the NIST 14 nominal mass library and a new in-house GC-QTOF MS library containing 589 accurate mass spectra. From 556 tested fragmentation patterns, 228 rules yielded true positive hits within 4 mDa mass accuracy. These rules can be applied to assign substructures for mass spectra computation and unknown identification. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Mass Spec Rev 37:245-257, 2018.