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Development of a fast‐switching dual (ESI/APCI) ionization source for liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry
Author(s) -
Brecht Dominik,
Uteschil Florian,
Schmitz Oliver J.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
rapid communications in mass spectrometry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.528
H-Index - 136
eISSN - 1097-0231
pISSN - 0951-4198
DOI - 10.1002/rcm.8845
Subject(s) - atmospheric pressure chemical ionization , chemistry , mass spectrometry , ion source , chromatography , direct electron ionization liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry interface , analytical chemistry (journal) , electrospray ionization , ionization , quadrupole mass analyzer , triple quadrupole mass spectrometer , hybrid mass spectrometer , selected reaction monitoring , chemical ionization , ion , tandem mass spectrometry , organic chemistry
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 D 3 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 D 3 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.