Over the past few years, atmospheric pressure ionization (API) interfaces have emerged as the ion source of choice for high sensitivity LC/MS. The Finnigan API interface may be operated in either of two complimentary modes: Electrospray Ionization (ESI), with flows of up to 1mL/min, or Atmospheric Pressure Chemical Ionization (APCI), with flows of up to 2mL/min. A major limiting factor in the rate of adoption of this hybrid technology has been the relatively high cost and complexity of commercially available instrumentation. A new, low cost, easy-to-use, benchtop instrument, the LCQ, now allows far broader access to the incredibly useful LC-API-MS/MS methodologies and is suited to both qualitative and quantitative analyses.
The LCQ, when operated in full scan MS/MS mode, is at least an order of magnitude more sensitive than traditional, linear quadrupole systems. The ability of the LCQ to perform data dependent analyses is ideally suited to metabolite identification and compound degradation studies. In addition, the LCQ has two unique modes of operation: MSn (multiple stages of selective, sequential analysis) and ZoomScan (a high resolution scan over a narrow window).
Application of the LCQ to solving a wide range of analytical problems (high sensitivity quantitation, metabolite profiling in complex matrix, MSn structural elucidation, peptide mapping, etc...) will be presented. The emphasis of this presentation will be the practical use of the LCQ's unique capabilities to solving real-life analytical challenges.