Di­rect MS
Ana­ly­sis

Plasmion’s SICRIT® Ion Source en­ables to per­form sen­si­ti­ve di­rect MS ana­ly­sis on any LC-MS in­stru­ment wi­t­hout sam­ple pre­pa­ra­ti­on. Di­rect and au­to­ma­ted in­tro­duc­tion of head­space or li­quid samples into the ion source via our heata­ble de­sorp­ti­on mo­du­le for quan­ti­ta­ti­ve ana­ly­sis wi­thin se­conds.

So­lid

Li­quid

Gas

So­lid
ex­em­pla­ry
re­sults

Fast, easy, no sam­ple pre­pa­ra­ti­on

By in­ser­ting a SPME Fi­ber or SPME Ar­row into the GC-SPME mo­du­le the en­ri­ched ana­lytes are ther­mal­ly de­sor­bed si­mul­ta­neous­ly. In this case the ex­tra­c­ted mass traces of th­ree pe­sti­ci­des from a spik­ed soil sam­ple are shown. The de­sorp­ti­on peak shape will de­pend on the vo­la­ti­li­ty and che­mi­cal ad­he­si­on to the SPME ma­te­ri­al. Each peak can be in­te­gra­ted using your stan­dard (LC-)MS soft­ware for ful­ly quan­ti­taive re­sults wi­t­hout using any chro­ma­to­gra­phy. Due to slight­ly dif­fe­rent de­sorp­ti­on pro­files also Data-De­con­vo­lu­ti­on for e.g. Data in­de­pen­dent work­flows is pos­si­ble.

Graphic that shows the extracted mass traces of a spiked soil sample using the GC/SPME-module and the SICRIT ion source.
Graphic that shows a full scan HRMS spectra of pesticides in a soil sample using the GC/SPME-module and the SICRIT ion source.

Due to its soft and broad io­niza­ti­on, SICRIT en­ables the par­al­lel mo­ni­to­ring of an theo­re­ti­cal­ly un­li­mi­t­ed amount of sub­s­tances using e.g. full scan high re­so­lu­ti­on MS. The spec­tra of pe­sti­ci­des ana­ly­zed in soil (left) show hard­ly any frag­men­ta­ti­on and are the­r­e­fo­re easy to in­ter­pret, di­rect­ly show­ing the mole­cu­lar in­for­ma­ti­on. This is tre­men­dous­ly be­ne­fi­ci­al for fast non-tar­get scree­nings.

At the same time the­se fea­tures also sim­pli­fy tar­ge­ted ana­ly­ses using MRMs sin­ce all in­ten­si­ty is con­fi­ned on the pa­rent MH+ spe­ci­es in­s­tead be­ing spread over mul­ti­ple in source frag­ments like e.g. in EI.

Even for com­plex ma­tri­ces e.g. was­te­wa­ter, this di­rect SPME quan­ti­ta­ti­on may pro­po­se a via­ble al­ter­na­ti­ve to con­ven­tio­nal chro­ma­to­gra­phy aproa­ches, espe­ci­al­ly when using in­ter­nal stan­dar­diza­ti­on. A ful­ly au­to­ma­ti­ve pre-quan­ti­fi­ca­ti­on, as shown for the pe­sti­ci­de Py­y­ri­me­tha­nil on the right, se­pa­ra­ting all ne­ga­ti­ve from po­ten­ti­al­ly po­si­ti­ve samples the­r­e­fo­re may help to save up to 90% in­stru­ment run­time and chro­ma­to­gra­phy con­su­ma­bles.

Also the fast ana­ly­sis times enable the use of stan­dard ad­di­ti­on aproa­ches sa­ving cos­ts for ex­pen­si­ve iso­to­pic la­be­led stan­dards.

Graphic that shows quantitative information about a pesticide separated from the complex matrice of wastewater

Li­quid
ex­em­pla­ry
re­sults

Re­pro­du­ci­b­le & quan­ti­ta­ti­ve wi­t­hout chro­ma­to­gra­phy

As ex­am­p­le we de­mons­tra­ted the re­pro­du­ci­bi­li­ty of 50 di­rect li­quid in­jec­tions of an al­ky­l­ami­ne stan­dard mo­ni­to­ring 5 MRMs in par­al­lel. This pro­ves, that di­rect SICRIT MS en­ables the same pre­cis­si­ons (RSD <5%) as you are usual­ly ex­pec­ting from clas­si­cal chro­ma­to­gra­phy MS cou­plings. This ac­tual­ly shows 50 ful­ly quan­ti­ta­ti­ve ana­ly­ses per­for­med in 30 mi­nu­tes.

Graph that shows the re­pro­du­ci­bi­li­ty of 50 di­rect li­quid in­jec­tions of an al­ky­l­ami­ne stan­dard mo­ni­to­ring 5 MRMs in par­al­lel
Graphic that shows a me­a­su­re­ment of Or­tho­me­thyl­ethers (OME) as bio­fuel featuring com­po­si­ti­on, size dis­tri­bu­ti­on and ad­di­ti­ves

A real world ex­am­p­le of di­rect li­quid MS ana­ly­sis is the me­a­su­re­ment of Or­tho­me­thyl­ethers (OME) as bio­fuel.

Here a com­pre­hen­si­ve in­sight on the com­po­si­ti­on, size dis­tri­bu­ti­on and ad­di­ti­ves can be gai­ned in less than 10 se­conds of me­a­su­re­ment time.

Strugg­ling with io­niza­ti­on? The uni­que io­niza­ti­on ca­pa­bi­li­ties of SICRIT enable the me­a­su­re­ment of „pro­blem“ mole­cu­les as shown on the right hand side. All of the­se mole­cu­les could not be io­ni­zed ef­fi­ci­ent­ly via ESI or APCI, but di­rect SICRIT MS de­li­ver­ed per­fect io­niza­ti­on as mole­cu­lar Ion.

Graphic of six complex molecules and how they have been ionized with the SICRIT ion source

Gas
ex­em­pla­ry
re­sults

Me­a­su­re & quan­ti­fy samples and pro­ces­ses in real-time.

Know­ledge is power! Espe­ci­al­ly in de­pht un­der­stan­ding of pro­ces­ses. As shown in this ex­am­p­le SICRIT en­ables the par­al­lel real time in-line me­a­su­re­ment of a cof­fee roas­ting pro­cess. In this ex­tre­me­ly com­plex roas­ting mix­tu­re over 500+ com­pon­ents could be in­di­vi­du­al­ly mo­ni­to­red with a time re­so­lu­ti­on of less than 1 se­cond.

So you get to know the sta­tus of your pro­cess, re­ac­tor or sny­the­sis on a mole­cu­lar le­vel any­ti­me!

Graphic that shows a par­al­lel real time in-line me­a­su­re­ment of a cof­fee roas­ting pro­cess
Graphic that shows the identification of a con­ta­mi­na­ti­on in a product compared to the correct product

VOC ana­ly­sis is chal­len­ging for clas­si­cal in­stru­men­ta­ti­on. With SICRIT you can di­rect­ly mo­ni­tor e.g. off fla­vors (shown left) or other con­ta­mi­na­ti­ons of your pro­ducts wi­t­hout the need for gas chro­ma­to­gra­phy. It is also ful­ly com­pa­ti­ble with clas­si­cal lab au­to­ma­ti­on and va­rious other off-line sam­pling tech­ni­ques (e.g. TD, Teddlar bags, etc.). De­ve­lo­ped for the gas pha­se de­tec­tion of che­mi­cal war­fa­re agents, SICRIT con­verts any LC-MS into a su­per sen­si­ti­ve VOC ana­ly­ser.

Po­si­ti­ve? Ne­ga­ti­ve? SICRIT de­li­vers both, si­mul­ta­neous­ly. When ana­ly­zing e.g. per­fluo­ri­na­ted com­pon­ents in Head­space, no ch­an­ge in set­tings has to made on the SICRIT source when swit­ching the MS from po­si­ti­ve to ne­ga­ti­ve mode. This en­ables fast po­la­ri­ty swit­ching ap­pli­ca­ti­ons and opens the field for di­rect ana­ly­sis, scree­ning and quan­ti­ta­ti­on of the­se high­ly re­gu­la­ta­ted per­fluo­ri­na­ted pol­lut­ants wi­t­hout chro­ma­to­gra­phy in real time!

Graphic that shows an headspace analysis of per­fluo­ri­na­ted com­pon­ents in positive and negative mode

Re­la­ted App No­tes

Che­mi­cal War­fa­re Agents – Di­rect SICRIT®-MS Ana­ly­sis
Alt­hough che­mi­cal war­fa­re agents (CWA) and their use are out­la­wed, they still are an im­mi­nent th­re­at to peo­p­le all over the world.

Fast and Di­rect De­tec­tion of Per­fluo­ro­car­box­lyic acids (PFCA) with SICRIT®-MS
Per- and po­ly­fluo­ro­al­kyl com­pounds (PFAS), espe­ci­al­ly their car­boxy­lic acids (PFCA), are ubi­qui­tous­ly used che­mi­cals as fla­me re­tar­dants, sur­fac­tants, and coa­tings.

Dis­co­ver our Pro­ducts

Find the per­fect so­lu­ti­on for your use case, with Plasmion’s ad­van­ced tech­no­lo­gy and ex­per­ti­se in che­mi­cal ana­ly­sis for re­se­arch or in­dus­try.

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