Determination of collision cross sections (CCS) using the cross-sectional areas by the Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (CRAFTI) technique is limited by the requirement that accurate pressures in the trapping cell of the mass spectrometer must be known. Experiments must also be performed in the energetic hardsphere regime such that ions decohere after single collisions with neutrals; this limits application to ions that are not much more massive than the neutrals. To mitigate these problems, we have resonantly excited two (or more) ions of different m/z to the same center-of-mass kinetic energy in a single experiment, subjecting them to identical neutral pressures. We term this approach "multi-CRAFTI". This facilitates measurement of relative CCS without requiring knowledge of the pressure and enables determination of absolute CCS using internal standards. Experiments with tetraalkylammonium ions yield CCS in reasonable agreement with the one-ion-at-a-time CRAFTI approach and with ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) when differences in collision energetics are taken into account (multi-CRAFTI generally yields smaller CCS than does IMS due to the higher collision energies employed in multi-CRAFTI). Comparison of multi-CRAFTI and IMS results with CCS calculated from structures computed at the M06-2X/6-31+G* level of theory using projection approximation or trajectory method values, respectively, indicates that the computed structures have CCS increasingly smaller than the experimental CCS as m/z increases, implying the computational model overestimates interactions between the alkyl arms. For ions that undergo similar collisional decoherence processes, relative CCS reach constant values at lower collision energies than do absolute CCS values, suggesting a means of increasing the accessible upper m/z limit by employing multi-CRAFTI.

We report data that suggest complexes with alkali cations capping the portals of cucurbit [5]uril (CB[5]) bind halide anions size-selectively as observed in the gas phase: Cl − binds inside the CB[5] cavity, Br − is observed both inside and outside, and I − binds weakly outside. This is reflected in sustained off-resonance irradiation collision-induced dissociation (SORI-CID) experiments: all detected Cl − complexes dissociate at higher energies, and Br − complexes exhibit unusual bimodal dissociation behavior, with part of the ion population dissociating at very low energies and the remainder dissociating at significantly higher energies comparable to those observed for Cl − . Decoherence cross sections measured in SF 6 using cross-sectional areas by Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance techniques for [CB[5] + M 2 X] + (M = Na, X = Cl or Br) are comparable to or less than that of [CB[5] + Na] + over a wide energy range, suggesting that Cl − or Br − in these complexes are bound inside the CB[5] cavity. In contrast, [CB[5] + K 2 Br] + has a cross section measured about 20% larger than that of [CB[5] + Na] + , suggesting external binding that may correspond with the weakly bound component seen in SORI. While I − complexes with alkali cation caps were not observed, alkaline earth iodides with CB[5] yielded complexes with cross sections 5−10% larger than that of [CB[5] + Na] + , suggesting externally bound iodide. Geometry optimization at the M06-2X/6-31+G* level of ab initio theory suggests that internal anion binding is energetically favored by approximately 50−200 kJ mol −1 over external binding; thus, the externally bound complexes observed experimentally must be due to large energetic barriers hindering the passing of large anions through the CB[5] portal, preventing access to the interior. Calculation of the barriers to anion egress using MMFF//M06-2X/6-31+G* theory supports this idea and suggests that the size-selective binding we observe is due to anion size-dependent differences in the barriers.

We determined collision cross section (CCS) values for singly and doubly charged cucurbit­[n]­uril (n = 5–7), decamethylcucurbit[5]­uril, and cyclohexanocucurbit[5]­uril complexes of alkali metal cations (Li+–Cs+). These hosts are relatively rigid. CCS values calculated using the projection approximation (PA) for computationally modeled structures of a given host are nearly identical for +1 and +2 complexes, with weak metal ion dependence, whereas trajectory method (TM) calculations of CCS for the same structures consistently yield values 7–10% larger for the +2 complexes than for the corresponding +1 complexes and little metal ion dependence. Experimentally, we measured relative CCS values in SF6 for pairs of +1 and +2 complexes of the cucurbituril hosts using the cross-sectional areas by Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (“CRAFTI”) method. At center-of-mass collision energies <∼30 eV, CRAFTI CCS values are sensitive to the relative binding energies in the +1 and +2 complexes, but at collision energies >∼40 eV (sufficient that ion decoherence occurs on essentially every collision) that dependence is not evident. Consistent with the PA calculations, these experiments found that the +2 complex ions have CCS values ranging between 94 and 105% of those of their +1 counterparts (increasing with metal ion size). In contrast, but consistent with the TM CCS calculations, ion mobility measurements of the same complexes at close to thermal energies in much less polarizable N2 find the CCS of +2 complexes to be in all cases 9–12% larger than those of the corresponding +1 complexes, with little metal ion dependence.