Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometer

Paul McNabb provides a short explanation on how an LC-MS functions.

Transcript

Paul McNabb

An LC-MS is really two instruments. It’s an LC – so liquid chromatograph – and this separates compounds based on their chemical properties. Toxins that are a different polarity will emerge from an LC system at different times. As they emerge from the LC system, they are volatilised, so they’re put from a liquid form into a gaseous form, and then they’re analysed within a mass spectrometer as charged particles. Certain chemicals will emerge from the LC, and then those chemicals give very distinctive signals in the mass spectrometer, and that signal is based on the size or the mass of the molecule.

So the mass spectrometer will separate compounds based on their mass. The mass spectrometer that we have will see things from a mass of around about 10 or 20 through to 3 or 4 thousand daltons. Daltons are a unit of atomic mass.

Acknowledgements
Paul McNabb
Cawthron Institute