why EI can not be used in determining protein primary structures? Solution EI is considered a hard (high fragmentation) ionization method, since it uses high energetic electrons to produce ions. This leads to extensive fragmentation, which can be helpful for structure determination of unknown compounds. EI is the most useful for organic compounds which have a molecular weight below 600. EI is useful for mass range <1000 Da, But Fragmentation of proteins in the 13000 to 29000Da mass range observed. Therefore, EI can not be used in determining protein primary structures .