Laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry of yttrium(III) chloride

Due to the increased use of yttrium in agriculture and industry, there is a growing interest in the impact of yttrium on the environment and human health. Developing novel procedures to detect and quantify species of yttrium represents an important task. In this work, we apply laser desorption/ionization-mass spectrometry (LDI-MS) to detect cluster ions of the solution of yttrium(III) chloride (YCl3) at different pH values. The density functional theory (DFT) calculations were used to reveal the energetically most favored structures of the anions and cations chosen from the LDI-MS results. Examination of the positive and negative mode LDI mass spectra of YCl3 showed the presence of the heterogeneous mononuclear and polynuclear clusters, such as [YCl(OH) (H2O)3][Formula: see text], [Y2(H2O)][Formula: see text], [Y4H2(H2O)4][Formula: see text], and [Y5O4H3][Formula: see text] (at pH 2 and 5) and [Y2Cl2(H2O)2][Formula: see text], [Y2O5(HCl)(OH)][Formula: see text], and [Y3OH3(OH)2(H2O)][Formula: see text] (at pH 2, 5, and 10). The variation in the pH solution of YCl3 slightly affects the LDI mass spectrum of these yttrium clusters. It has only been noticed that the [Y4H2(H2O)4][Formula: see text] cluster ions were not detected at pH 10. These results can become a guide in the detection of yttrium chloride by LDI-MS in real samples in different fields (ecological, food, and human).