AB SCIEX QTRAP5500LC/MS/MS liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry analyzer

AB SCIEX QTRAP® 5500LC/MS/MSSystem liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry instrument

SCIEX's liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) instrument provides stable sensitivity, selectivity, tolerability, and reproducibility, and is combined with a linear ion trap to meet quantitative and qualitative requirements. QTRAP ® The 5500 LC/MS/MS system can provide stable and sensitive quantitative and qualitative analysis data on the same mass spectrometer (if MRM can be performed, MS/MS can be performed). It combines the scanning methods of quadrupole rods and linear ion traps, making it an analytical platform for many fields such as drug analysis, ADME/toxicology research, metabolomics, forensic science, clinical research, environmental and food analysis. Its characteristics include:

• QJet ™- 2 Ion Introduction Technology: Improved System Sensitivity

• Bending LINAC ® Collision chamber: improves ion transport speed, increases ion capacity, and prevents cross contamination

• Q3 Linear Acceleration Technology: Improved MS/MS Scanning Capability

• MRM-IDA-EPI (Rod Trap Scanning) method: can establish a high-quality EPI mass spectrometry library

• AcQuRate ™ Pulse ion counting detector: stable system reproducibility and accuracy

• eQ ™ Electronic Design: Quick Scan andfastPositive and negative switching scan

• Air curtain interface technology: reduces pollution and improves work efficiency

• Turbo V ™ Ion source: it can meet the requirements of liquid phase flow rate within the range, prevent ion suppression of electric spray, and has the function of self-cleaning probe

• New Analyst 1.5 ® The software provides a new quantitative analysis toolkit and features an intelligent s-MRM data acquisition mode

Compact size is an important improvement over previous instruments for the 5500.

5500 episodes with all attachments integrated. The panel has a switching valve, and there is a reserved position below for customers to install another valve. The ion source is in the middle, the needle pump is on the right (moving upwards), and the instrument status display light is on the top right.The volume has been reduced by 44% compared to previous generations of models.

ABI can also provide 5500 with a box that includes mechanical pumps and nitrogen generators, which can reduce noise and overall footprint.

Six major technological innovations of ABI 5500 system in hardware

1、 Interface improvement: Increased sensitivity of QaQ/MRM
QJet ion guidance technology was used (note: models prior to API 5000 used Skimmer),

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• Orifice diameter is 0.62 mm, QJet length is 12.5 cm, aperture is 4mm, IQ0 inlet aperture is 1.7 mm;

• The quadrupole rod combined with an RF frequency of up to 1.228 MHz increases the potential of focused ions, resulting in improved ion transport efficiency at low mass to charge ratios. Although the m/z range of 5500 is between 5-1000 amu, the sensitivity is higher.

• At the same time, reducing the focusing aperture of the collision chamber, IQ2, and IQ3 relatively increases the pumping force of the molecular pump in the analysis area. When performing MS/MS scanning, it also increases the vacuum of the analyzer, thereby improving sensitivity.

II QJet ™- Two ion lenses have improved the sensitivity of the system

The QJet-2 ion lens is used to focus ions from an ion source, with only RF RF voltage applied to the quadrupole; Large aperture design allows more ions to enter the mass analyzer; Capture ions using principles of aerodynamics and RF voltage, and focus them into the high vacuum region of the mass analyzer. This is the foundation for improving sensitivity.

3、 The curved LINAC collision chamber enhances ion transport speed and increases ion capacity

Q2 is a curved LINAC collision chamber that enhances the axial electric field of LINAC, resulting in faster ion transport capability. The advantages lie in: (1) reducing the volume of the instrument and relieving the pressure of the molecular pump (only one molecular pump is needed); (2) The curved collision chamber design can reduce the entry of neutral substances; (3) The improvement of hardware and the design of new linear accelerators, combined with the refinement of software and electronics, have resulted in shorter pause and dwell times during MRM experiments without compromising the quality of mass spectrometry data (such as sensitivity not decreasing even for a few milliseconds). For example, the voltage of Q2 is usually 50V, which can accelerate ions faster compared to the previous instrument's 1.9V.

4、 Provides a linearly accelerated ion trap ™ Trap: Improve scanning speed and analysis time

The reason for improving the sensitivity of linear ion traps comes from:
(1) Linear acceleration ion trap technology involves adding an axial voltage within the linear ion trap, causing the target ions to concentrate more towards the extraction area before scanning (ions are concentrated).
(2) Appropriately increase a certain phase auxiliary RF voltage in the ion extraction zone

The reason for higher spectral quality and richer mass spectrometry fragments in the ion trap comes from:
(1) The introduction of pulse gas can cool ions faster
(2) Pulse gas and higher RF voltage can generate richer ion fragment information in the ion trap within a short ion activation time

The previous Qtrap3200 and Qtrap4000 had an ion trap scanning speed of 4000 amu/sec, while Qtrap5500 increased it to 20000 amu/sec.

Shorter ion trap fragment scanning time, previously a few milliseconds, now up to 50 microseconds

Features:

• High ion capacity linear ion trap

• Sensitivity improvement (the scanning sensitivity of the trap has been increased by 100 times)

• Scan speed increased by 5 times (20000 amu/sec)

• Shorten ion filling time by 20 times

• Resolution increased by 2 times (better than 12000)

• Improve the accuracy of mass to charge ratio by three times

5 AcQuRate ™ Pulse ion counting detector: stable system reproducibility and accuracy

A pulse ion counter is a device that detects ion pulses generated when ions collide with an electron multiplier at a certain time, and outputs a digital signal related to the ion flow. Compared to analog detectors, it is less susceptible to the influence of background noise; And there is no need to filter the signal.

The repeatability is very good at different concentration points. For example, at extremely low concentrations of 1-100 fg/uL, if an analog detector is used, the CV can even reach 40%, while using a pulse ion counter, the CV is always below 3%. So, pulse ion counters are very sensitive and have stable results

VI eQ ™ Electroics electronic system: fast scanning, fast positive and negative switching of ESI

The design of the eQ electronic system has increased the speed of the series quadrupole by four times without reducing sensitivity; The collision chamber adopts dynamic axial design; The performance of mother ion scanning and neutral loss scanning did not decrease.

We know that the speed of MRM is related to several factors, such as scanning speed, dwell time of ions, MRM switching speed, and sometimes positive/negative ion switching speed needs to be considered.

In the MRM experiment, a mass number was scanned, so the scanning speed (2000 amu/sec) exceeded the requirements of the MRM experiment; The bottleneck that restricted speed in the past was the ion residence time, which used to take several tens of milliseconds. If it was too short, the data quality would be affected. There is a similar bottleneck for MRM switching speed.

The design of 5500 enables it to maintain data quality even with a residence time of 2 milliseconds and an MRM switching speed of 2-3 milliseconds, thus solving the current bottleneck of MRM speed. At the same time, it has a fast ESI positive and negative polarity switching speed (50 milliseconds).

Overall, in terms of MRM performance, a single experiment can detect 2500 pairs of MRM ions, and 1000 pairs of MRM ions can be detected within a time period without compromising data quality.

Overall, obtain a stable sensitivity and speed. Specific indicators were not provided, but several graphs were displayed: MRM experiment, 5 fg of Levofloxacin, signal-to-noise ratio S/N of 57:1; On the column, sample was taken with 10 fg of Levofloxacin, and the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) was 23:1.