The amino acid serine is known to form a very stable octamer which has properties that sets it apart from serine complexes having different sizes or from complexes composed of other amino acids. For example, both singly protonated serine octamers and anionic octamers complexed with two halogen ions, strongly prefer homochirality even when assembled from racemic D, L mixtures.Consequently, the structures of these complexes are of great interest but no acceptable candidates have so far been identified. Here we investigate anionic serine octamers coordinated with two chloride ions using a novel ion mobility/infrared spectroscopy technique in combination with theoretical calculations. The results allow the identification of a unique structure for (Ser 8 Cl 2 ) 2-that is highly symmetric, very stable, homochiral and whose calculated properties match those observed in the experiments.
3Clusters of atoms or molecules with unusually high relative intensities in mass spectra are termed "magic". In many instances, those "magic" clusters could be assigned to specific structures, often of high symmetry. Examples are numerous and include rare gas clusters 1 , fullerenes, most notably C 60 , 2 Ti 8 C 12 "metallocarbohedrane", 3 metal clusters such as Au 20 , 4,5 and highly symmetric protonated water clusters. 6,7 In the case of C 60 , the initial observation of magic numbers in mass spectra eventually led to the discovery of a new group of materials and a new form of carbon.Occasionally a "magic" cluster resists structural characterization. A famous example is the serine octamer. After electrospray of solutions containing serine, it was first observed that a cluster with the composition (Ser 8 H) + dominated the mass spectrum. 8 This is in contrast to mass spectra of other amino acid clusters, for which the intensity patterns of peaks in their mass spectra show much smoother evolution. The experimental observations have spurred calculations, and several candidates for structures of cationic serine octamers have been proposed. 8,17,[19][20][21] However, for most of them, the proposed structures do not provide an obvious reason for the observed homochirality. In addition, while the calculations indicate that the proposed structures are stable, they are not dramatically more stable compared to serine clusters of different sizes. Thus, there is no general consensus of the structure of serine octamer clusters and the quest for finding a structure that is compatible with the experimental observations is still ongoing.
4In contrast to the abundance of studies on the cationic serine octamer, little attention has so far been given to the anionic species. Here, we present results from a study on serine cluster anions, in which we couple ion mobility-mass spectrometry (IMS-MS) with infrared (IR) spectroscopy.IMS-MS gives the absolute, angle averaged collision cross section (CCS) of specific clusters and this value can be used to determine the overall size of the cluster and to judge if particular calculated structures are compa...