Decon2 - a manual deconvolution spreadsheet.

An excel-based deconvolution routine. It will calculate molecular weights from an ion series, or - starting with a single ion - will calculate other expected members of a series. Works with either positive or negative ions.

It's designed for pulling information out of noisy data, so it's not as fast or as slick as most of the commercial deconvolution routines. It's especially nice for people who are just beginning mass spec on multiply-charged species, since it's not a black box treatment of charge envelopes.

For example, if you see what seems to be a series of ions, enter one in the box and then guess at the charge level. It will then calculate the m/z values for the associated series along with a molecular weight. If none of the values match any experimental values, try another charge level. When you (finally) enter the correct charge (if there is in fact a series) then the calculated values will match the observed values and the molecular weight will be correct. (The 'correctness' will depend on how good the actual data is.)

If you're good at excel, you can probably convert it into an automatically-iterated version, but I like the manual version because it's instructive and intuitive.

Click here:decon_exact.xlsx