What Should You Look for When Buying a Mass Spectrometer

What Should You Look for When Buying a Mass Spectrometer  

In addition to the available budget in my opinion, the following points play a central role in making buying decisions  

If only target analyses is planned (e.g., analysis of known impurities in a product or pesticide analysis), a quadrupole or triple quadrupole-MS would be the best choice. With these devices a very sensitive analysis will be guaranteed, and also a quick pre-separation (e.g., UHPLC) is now possible for many devices. 

If nontarget analysis should be realized, high-resolution mass spectrometer such as QTOF or Orbitrap would facilitate the analysis considerably. Even if a high sample throughput is still necessary, the QTOF would get precedence over the slow Orbitrap in high-resolution mode. However, regarding the resolution Orbitrap, in comparison with QTOF, is the more powerful system. The sensitivity of a QTOF is about a factor 10 lower than that of a triple quad, but detection limits in the lower parts per billion range are quite possible. 

Perhaps, due to a high number of samples, no pre-separation will be done. But then, it should be ensured that suitable so-called ambient desorption ionization techniques such as DESI, DART, ASAP, and DIP-APCI can be coupled to the MS. 

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