Hydralazine derivative of aldehyde: A new type of [M − H]+ ion formed in electrospray ionization mass spectrometry

Hydralazine has been widely employed in the development of drugs, derivatization reagents, and ligands. In the present work, we reported a new type of dehydrogenated ion [M − H] + that was produced from the hydralazine derivative of hexanal in electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS). The formation of [M − H] + ions in the ESI-MS was found to be independent on the mobile phase composition of the liquid chromatography and ESI source parameters. A series of hydralazine derivatives of aldehyde were investigated to confirm this phenomenon. The results showed that hydralazine derivatives of aldehydes that contained an sp 3 hybridization carbon with a hydrogen at the α-position of aldehydes could form the unexpected [M − H] + ions, whereas hydralazine derivative of acetone could only generate [M + H] + ion in the ESI-MS. We proposed the possible formation mechanism of [M − H] + ion for the hydralazine derivatives of aldehydes: the [M − H] + ion was possibly formed by the loss a hydrogen molecule (H 2 ) from the protonated ion [M + H] + . The results obtained from density functional theory (DFT) calculations supported this proposed formation mechanism of [M − H] + ion.