Weaver Paul J, Laures Alice M-F, Wolff Jean-Claude
Analytical Sciences, GlaxoSmithKline, Medicines Research Centre, Gunnels Wood Road, Stevenage SG1 2NY, UK.
Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom. 2007;21(15):2415-21. doi: 10.1002/rcm.3052.
Time-of-flight mass spectrometry (ToF-MS) has gained wide acceptance in many fields of chemistry, proteomics, metabolomics and small molecule analysis. ToF-MS, however, has some inherent advantages and drawbacks. Numerous developments have been made to hybrid ToF instruments to improve their capabilities. We have used a quadrupole orthogonal acceleration ToF (Q-oa-ToF) instrument to assess developments made to improve resolution, dynamic range and signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios (i.e. sensitivity). Higher mass resolution can improve the analysis of mixtures containing compounds with similar m/z values and improved mass accuracy gives greater confidence for structural elucidation applications. Wide dynamic ranges are necessary for the analysis of unknown samples or samples that vary widely in analyte concentrations. The performance of the advanced functionalities for routine structural elucidation in terms of resolution, dynamic range and S/N ratios was investigated using test compounds. The results presented in this work demonstrate and validate the use of these new enhancements for Q-ToF instruments and also show their limitations.
飞行时间质谱（ToF-MS）在化学、蛋白质组学、代谢组学和小分子分析等许多领域已得到广泛认可。然而，ToF-MS有一些固有的优点和缺点。为了提高混合ToF仪器的性能，人们已经进行了大量的改进。我们使用了一台四极杆正交加速飞行时间（Q-oa-ToF）仪器来评估为提高分辨率、动态范围和信噪比（即灵敏度）所做的改进。更高的质量分辨率可以改善对含有m/z值相似化合物的混合物的分析，而提高的质量精度为结构解析应用提供了更大的信心。宽动态范围对于未知样品或分析物浓度差异很大的样品的分析是必要的。使用测试化合物研究了先进功能在常规结构解析方面在分辨率、动态范围和信噪比方面的性能。这项工作中给出的结果证明并验证了这些新增强功能在Q-ToF仪器上的应用，同时也显示了它们的局限性。
