Atmospheric-pressure-chemical-ionization combined with electrospray interface

In recent years, TLC was successfully combined with different ionization techniques, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI), ESI, atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI), desorption electrospray ionization (DESI), electrospray-assisted laser desorption ionization (ELDI), and LDI for identification and quantification of organic and biomolecules. In this section, the interfacing of TLC techniques with MALDI-ESI/MS, DESI-MS, ELSI-MS, and LDI-MS will be described, performance will be discussed, and selected applications in the separation and identification of lipids, gangliosides, dyes, drugs, and medicinal compounds will be presented. 

LC/MS is the ultimate analytical technique, which combines the versatility of HPLC with the identification power of MS. The weak link in LC/MS has always been the interface which connects the liquid stream at atmospheric pressure to the high vacuum present inside the mass spectrometer. The development of several atmospheric pressure interfaces, electrospray and atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI), has contributed to the tremendous success and popularity of LC/MS and LC/MS/MS in bioresearch, drug discovery, combinatorial analysis and pharmacokinetic assays. This topic is covered in more depth in a later chapter. 

Another popular and efficient inlet system for the LC/MS combination is the atmospheric pressure chemical ionization process. This system has some similarity to the electrospray interface and can also cope with flow rates of up to 2 ml/min. and thus the total column eluent can be utilized without splitting the flow. 

Mass spectrometry with its excellent sensitivity is emerging as one of the most powerful analytical techniques.16 Its importance was recognized by the awarding of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to John B. Fenn and Koichi Tanaka for their research in mass spectrometric methods for biomolecules. The primary difficulties of combining LC and MS have been the interface, and the ionization of analytes in a stream of condensed liquids and transfer of ions into the high vacuum inside the mass spectrometry. Two common LC/MS interfaces are the electrospray ionization (ESI) and the atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI). Figure 4.13a shows a schematic diagram of an... 

Detection by mass spectrometry is growing in popularity. This is undoubtedly a result of the high detection sensitivity and positive identification offered by MS in association with the fast development of interfaces between column and detector that have greatly simplified the IC/MS combination. Several combinations of IC and MS detection are available. These include ICP-MS (element-specific detection) and MS with atmosphere pressure ionization (API), operated with either electrospray ionization (ESI) or atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI). 

MS-MS is currently very widely used in combination with chromatographic separation methods, especially LC. The obvious reason for this is the frequent use of soft ionization techniques in LC-MS interfacing, i.e. electrospray and atmospheric-pressure chemical ionization. MS-MS allows additional structural information as well as the molecular mass information to be obtained. On-line LC-MS-MS is currently the method-of-choice in quantitative bioanalysis in (pre-) clinical pharmacological studies during drug development in pharmaceutical industries. In these studies, the instrument is operated in... 

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