Waters Charged Aerosol Detector (CAD)

Waters Corporation’s Charged Aerosol Detector (CAD) has been specifically designed for use with Waters Empower Software, the company’s chromatography data system (CDS). It enables scientists to fully characterise the physical and chemical properties of molecules within a secure and compliant workflow.

According to Waters, customers want a better experience controlling charged aerosol detection as part of their chromatographic analysis, with 70% noting recurring dropped CDS communications when using multi-vendor LC-CAD configurations. The CAD resolves these issues with a robust, easy-to-adopt, single-vendor solution for LC-CAD methods, underpinned by Empower Software.

The aerosol detector delivers sensitive, consistent and reproducible measurement of analytes with little or no UV absorption — including sugars, lipids, impurities and excipients — often without the need for sample pre-treatment. This makes it suitable for characterising a broad range of materials, from small molecule and biopharmaceutical formulations to food additives, nutrients and environmental pollutants.

The product delivers competitive dynamic range and sensitivity, alongside optimised compatibility with MaxPeak High-Performance Surfaces that mitigate non-specific adsorption. The detector can be used with a wide range of Waters liquid chromatography systems, including the Alliance iS HPLC System, the Arc HPLC System, and all ACQUITY UPLC Systems.

The seamless integration of the CAD with Empower Software delivers an enhanced user experience, supported by Waters’ support and service provision. Issues commonly seen in multi-vendor LC-CAD systems, including challenging set-up and dropped communication between detector and chromatograph — leading to interrupted sample sets and in some cases detector flooding — are reduced when using a Waters LC-CAD configured with Empower CDS. In addition, methods developed for existing CADs can be easily transferred using built-in tools.