Panelists from Our February 23 Webinar Identify Key Features to Consider When Purchasing an LC-MS System

Once the domain of do-it-yourself Ph.D. scientists who spent years studying its intricacies, mass spectrometry (MS) is continuing to go “down market,” says Alessandro Baldi, Ph.D., business manager for MS at PerkinElmer (Waltham, MA).

LECO Corporation continues its history of innovation in high-speed time-of-flight mass spectrometry with the introduction of new High Resolution TOFMS (HRT) instrumentation, available in LC and GC configurations.

Mass spectrometers, one of the principal instruments for investigating chemical composition, operate by separating ions according to their mass/charge ratio by transmitting them through a magnetic and electrical field.

Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) is the fastest-growing GC method.

Delivers a resolving power of greater than 60,000 (FWHM) over a wide mass range of m/z 10-30,000.

Provides tunable resolution of 4,000 to 7,000 at FWHM at m/z 281.

Among the hyphenated mass spectrometry (MS) techniques, gas chromatography-MS (GC-MS) and high-performance liquid chromatography- MS (LC-MS) are the most notable. These methods combine the resolving power of high-resolution chromatography with the specificity and sensitivity of MS.

David Hachey, Ph.D., talks about his role as the director of both the mass spectrometry and proteomics core laboratories at Vanderbilt University.

CompuChem, a division of Liberty Analytical based in Cary, North Carolina, recently improved sample delivery, measurement protocol and rinse-out times by coupling a rapid sampling system with an ICP-MS system, reducing the time required to analyze a typical CLP sample by 80 percent.

The popularity of mass spectrometers (MS) in the food, clinical research and pharmaceutical markets has pushed labs to seek ways to improve the speed of their liquid chromatography (LC), thus increasing the throughput of their MS.