Mass spectrometric approaches in structural characterization of cephalosporins

Abstract
The mass spectrometric behaviour of five structurally different cephalosporins has been studied in detail by means of different ionization/desorption methods (electron impact, fast atom bombardment, desorption chemical ionization, laser‐induced vaporization) and metastable ion studies (linked scans and mass‐analysed ion kinetic energy spectrometry). The best results were obtained by fast atom bombardment mass spectrometry, leading to both molecular ions and fragment ions diagnostic for structural identification.