Question

What are advantages and disadvantages of mass spectroscopy?

Answer 1

The molecular mass of small and medium size molecules can be measured with the help of mass spectrometry and also used to determine the composition of elements in the molecule. The molecular masses of macromolecules like proteins can also be determined by mass spectrometry.

Complete answer:
Mass spectrometry which is abbreviated as MS gives us basic information about the molecular weight of any compound.
There are many advantages and disadvantages of mass spectrometry which can be described as follows:
Advantages:
1. It is used for both qualitative and quantitative analysis of chemical substances.
2. Rather than only molecular masses it also classifies sample isotopes and helps us about finding the chemical structure of the unknown compound.
3. This can calculate the purity of the sample.
4. The main advantage is it is very much sensitive from other techniques.
Thus we can say that it is an excellent tool for identifying or confirming the presence of unknown compounds.
Disadvantages:
1. The main disadvantage of mass spectroscopy is that those hydrocarbons which produce similar ions are not identified.
2. It is also not able to separate optical and geometrical isomers.
3. Mass spectroscopy also fails to distinguish between hydrocarbons having similarly fragmented ions.
Hence these are main advantages and disadvantages of mass spectroscopy.

Note:
With the help of this spectroscopy we will also calculate the relative percentages of different components like carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen present in the given molecule. Hence we can say this that the mass spectroscopy is quite useful in determining a molecular formula for the compound which we need to identify.