Historical View of Interfaces

2 Moving Belt System. Initially developed by McFadden et al. [13], the moving belt system was based on the physical method of evaporation of the mobile phase through heat and vacuum that leave analytes as a thin coating on a continuously cycling polyimide belt. The analytes were transported from atmospheric pressure region to the vacuum of the ion source through differentially pumped vacuum locks. Ionization methods used 

23 Thermospray. The thermospray interface was introduced and developed by Blakley and Vestal [14], In their approach, a liquid flow from HPLC was directed through a resistively heated capillary connecting to the MS ion source. The heat and vacuum would evaporate the solvent from a supersonic beam of mobile phase produced in the spray, creating charged small microdroplets. These small liquid droplets were further vaporized in the heated ion source. Ions present in the ion source were then transferred to the mass analyzer, and residual vapors were pumped away. 

A main advantage of thermospray is that it can handle commonly used HPLC eluents at higher flow rates (up to 2mL/min) and generate good results for polar, nonvolatile, and thermolabile compounds. However, the sensitivity of the method is highly compound-dependent and not particularly attractive to high-molecular-weight compounds. 

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