DEVELOPMENT OF A CAPILLARY HIGH-PERFORMANCE LIQUID-CHROMATOGRAPHY TANDEM MASS-SPECTROMETRY SYSTEM USING SWIFT TECHNOLOGY IN AN ION TRAP REFLECTRON TIME-OF-FLIGHT MASS-SPECTROMETER/

In this work a capillary high-performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry system has been developed in a quadrupole ion trap/ reflectron time-of-flight mass spectrometer, The broadband excitation for isolating a precursor ion is achieved by generating the stored wav eform inverse Fourier transform,waveform in real time. Following the i solation and cooling periods, an auxiliary AC voltage (tickle) is appl ied to the entrance end cap of the ion trap to generate collision indu ced dissociation, The amplitude of the tickle voltage is optimized on- line using a feedback method which involves having two computers commu nicating with each other, This system has been tested with a 4-peptide mixture and tandem mass spectra were obtained for each peptide. (C) 1 997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.