Vacuum differential mobility spectrometry combined with column-switching liquid chromatography- mass spectrometry for the analysis of pyrrolizidine alkaloids in tea samples.

The benefit of combining liquid chromatography (LC), supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) and vacuum Differential Mobility Spectrometry - Mass Spectrometry (vDMS-MS) was investigated for the analysis of fourteen diastereomeric pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PA); intermedine, echinatine, lycopsamine, indicine, intermedine-N-oxide, echinatine-N-oxide, indicine-N-oxide, lycopsamine-N-oxide, senecivernine, senecionine, jacobine, senecivernine-N-oxide, senecionine-N-oxide, retrorsine. The mobile phase composition (15-100% MeOH and ACN), flow rate (8-100 µL/min), vDMS cell pressure, and F value showed an effect on the mobility behavior of the analytes. At 15% MeOH with a flow rate of 100 µL/min and 33 mbar vDMS pressure, 8 out 14 PA could be partially or totally separated by vDMS-MS. As well as providing an additional separation dimension vDMS improved the selectivity and a 5-minute assay method was developed for the quantification of 10 out of 14 single diastereomeric PA in tea samples, using a short LC column-switching and hyphenated to vDMS-MS in the selected ion monitoring mode. The performance of the method was found to be comparable with a 12-minute standard LC-MS/MS method using detection in the selected reaction monitoring mode. Additionally, the combination of vDMS and SFC-MS was investigated and suggests that the mixture of CO/MeOH influences the CV shifting of the PA to more negative compensation voltage, and the signal-to-noise ratio is improved by a factor of three compared to SFC-MS without vDMS.