WeO-03
PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS OF A NOVEL ORTHOGONAL NEBULIZATION SYSTEM FOR LC-API/MS
A. Apffel, S. Fischer, P. Goodley, J. Bertsch and M. Wehrlich
Hewlett-Packard Company, 1601 California Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA
A novel and significant nebulization scheme for coupling liquid delivery systems to Atmospheric Pressure Ionization Mass Spectrometry is described which orients a broad flow pneumatic nebulizer orthogonally with respect to a sampling orifice of a fixed leak into the mass spectrometer. The technique works equally well for both electrospray ionization (ESI) and atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI). The orthogonal orientation results in a dramatic reduction in detector noise created by large liquid clusters, while maintaining efficient analyte ion production and extraction. When using this geometric arrangement, the signal-to-noise ratios are improved by a factor of 10 fold. The orthogonal geometry can be used with a wide range of flow rates. Flows from 10 µL/min to 2500 µL/min allow it to be used for a wide range of applications from capillary electrophoresis, micro-LC and conventional HPLC with 1.0, 2.1 or 4.6 mm columns. In this work, optimization studies will be described. The use of the system with capillary electrophoresis-electrospray mass spectrometry (CE-ESI/MS) and HPLC-APCI/MS will show the breadth of application areas. Finally the use of the system for peptide mapping will be demonstrated and compared to conventional non-orthogonal nebulization.