An Overview of Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectroscopy Instrumentation

摘要

Chromatography is a separation technique used to separate the individual compound from a mixture using a stationaryand mobile phase. Discovery of chromatography is a millstone event in biomedical research. Chromatographic separationis based on the principles of adsorption, partition, ion exchange, molecular exclusion, affinity and Chirality. There aremany types of chromatography available for quantitative and qualitative analysis of pharmaceutical agents, whichincludes Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS). Combination of chromatography with spectrometry isfirst reported in 1967 and first LC-MS system was introduced in 1980s. LC-MS is an analytical chemistry technique thatcombines the physical separation capabilities of liquid chromatography with the mass analysis and mass spectrometry.Mainly the LC-MS contains liquid chromatography assembly, ion generation unit/ ionization source, mass analyzer andmass spectrometric data acquisition. LC-MS is most commonly used in biomedical sciences for pharmacokinetic analysis,genetic analysis, structural elucidation, etc. The main objective of this review is to overview the principle, instrumentationand application of LC-MS.