Progress in Coupling Systems Boosts LC/MS Prospects

Abstract

Liquid chromatography /mass spectrometry (LC/MS) soon will become a formidable competitor to gas chromatography/ mass spectrometry (GC/MS), according to evidence presented at the recent American Chemical Society national meeting in Washington, D.C. The combination of GC and MS has led to the development of powerful tools for identifying and quantitating trace components of complex mixtures. Its usefulness is not universal, however. One problem has been that many compounds, because of their involatility or their heat sensitivity, just aren't amenable to GC, at least not without the application of derivatization techniques or some other roundabout approach. The obvious solution to that difficulty— coupling liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry—has turned out to be harder than the analogous GC/MS case. Nevertheless, progress is being made on a number of fronts. At a Division of Analytical Chemistry symposium on LC/MS, Bruce A. Thomson, a senior research scientist with Toronto-based Sciex, conceded that...