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A soft on‐column metal coating procedure for robust sheathless electrospray emitters used in capillary electrophoresis‐mass spectrometry
Author(s) -
Trapp Oliver,
Pearce Evan W.,
Kimmel Joel R.,
Yoon Oh Kyu,
Zuleta Ignacio A.,
Zare Richard N.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
electrophoresis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.666
H-Index - 158
eISSN - 1522-2683
pISSN - 0173-0835
DOI - 10.1002/elps.200410152
Subject(s) - electrospray , coating , chemistry , capillary action , chromatography , mass spectrometry , capillary electrophoresis , analytical chemistry (journal) , capillary electrophoresis–mass spectrometry , electrospray ionization , materials science , composite material , organic chemistry
An on‐column metal coating procedure was developed for sheathless electrospray emitters, based on Justus von Liebig's electroless silver mirror reaction followed by electrochemical deposition of gold onto the silver layer. The coating procedure is straightforward, mild, inexpensive, and can be performed with standard laboratory equipment. A long‐term (600 h) stability investigation of the conductive coating was carried out by continuous electrospray in the positive electrospray mode, and no degradation in performance was found. The simplicity of the coating procedure and the robustness of the spray tips makes the spray tips highly suitable to couple delicate wall‐coated or monolithic capillary columns to mass spectrometry. Peptide mixtures were separated by capillary electrophoresis and injected into either a Hadamard‐transform time‐of‐flight mass analyzer or a commercial quadrupole mass analyzer using the described sheathless electrospray emitters. The performance was judged to be excellent.