9309467 Whitmire This award from the Chemistry Research Instrumentation Program will assist the Department of Chemistry at Rice University in the purchase of high resolution Mass Spectrometer . This new instrumentation will enhance greatly research in a number of areas including the following: 1) The chemistry of C60 and the higher fullerenes, 2) Synthetic and structural investigations of the catalytic formation of C-C bonds, the use of new thermal or photochemical cycloadditions and the development of new syntheses of nitrogenous substances, 3) The formation of nitrogen- and carbon-centered radicals from azoalkanes, 4) The use of mass spectrometry in the total synthesis of complex natural products, 5) The biosynthesis of natural products, 6) Chemistry of the heavy main group elements. This instrument will replace two old mass spectrometers, one purchased in 1969 and one purchased in 1975. %%% The mass spectrometer is used to measure the precise mass of molecular ions. The fragmentation pattern of the various ions present gives information about the molecular structure of the parent molecules from which the molecular ions evolved. Such information is essential for any modern program of chemical synthesis. ***
