Brecht D, Uteschil F, Schmitz OJ. Development of a fast-switching dual (ESI/APCI) ionization source for liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry.
RAPID COMMUNICATIONS IN MASS SPECTROMETRY : RCM 2020;
34:e8845. [PMID:
32468622 DOI:
10.1002/rcm.8845]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/12/2020] [Revised: 05/05/2020] [Accepted: 05/26/2020] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
RATIONALE
High-throughput liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) is an increasing topic in analytical chemistry. Especially the idle time of a mass spectrometer should be reduced for an efficient and cost-saving use. Therefore, a fast-switching dual ion source was developed, which uses the most important ionization techniques at atmospheric pressure, electrospray ionization (ESI) and atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI), with one or more LC systems.
METHODS
The performance of the developed ion source is shown by infusion experiments and chromatographic analyses of different standard substances. A high-throughput method is demonstrated by coupling two UHPLC systems to the dual ion source with a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer.
RESULTS
No decrease in the ion abundance and a stable performance of the mass spectrometer are presented while using the dual ion source. Instrumental limits of detection are 30 ng L-1 for testosterone using ESI and 1 μg L-1 for vitamin D3 using APCI. A fast switching between two UHPLC systems and the dual ion source leads to a high sample throughput of 50 samples in 75 min with relative standard deviations for testosterone and vitamin D3 of 1.5% and 3.8%, respectively.
CONCLUSIONS
This work presents the development of a dual ESI and APCI ion source operating simultaneously or in switched mode. The results show sensitive and reliable performance as well as the hyphenation to one or more HPLC systems.
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