Time-of-flight LC/MS

The 6230 Accurate-Mass time-of-flight (TOF) LC/MS system can detect and identify compounds in amounts smaller than 2 pg, making it suitable for food safety, toxicology and other measurements where minute amounts of compounds must be identified.

To complement the system’s sensitivity, Agilent has also compiled a pesticide accurate-mass database, enabling users to rapidly identify pesticides in food and environmental samples with a high degree of confidence.

The pesticide database contains accurate mass information for more than 1600 compounds, including links to structural data found in PubChem, ChemSpider and other chemical databases. The database also accommodates the addition of LC retention times which, combined with accurate mass results, provides increased confidence in confirming compound identity.

The 6230 Accurate Mass TOF LC/MS is claimed to deliver sub-1 ppm mass accuracy. Mass resolution is enhanced with up to 20,000 resolving power and up to 20 mass spectra per second, accommodating high-throughput, rapid-resolution liquid chromatography platforms.

The Jet Stream thermal-gradient-focusing technology uses a sheath of super-heated nitrogen so that more ions and fewer solvent droplets enter the mass analyser. The result is claimed to be a stronger signal and less noise for far greater sensitivity.

The 6230 Accurate Mass TOF uses Agilent MassHunter Workstation software with data acquisition and qualitative and quantitative data-analysis capabilities. These include data mining functionality based on molecular feature extraction and molecular formula generation algorithms, facilitating identification of compounds in complex mixtures.