DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF AN INTERFACE FOR COUPLED CAPILLARY SUPERCRITICAL-FLUID CHROMATOGRAPHY MAGNETIC-SECTOR MASS-SPECTROMETRY - APPLICATION TO THERMALLY UNSTABLE AND HIGH MOLECULAR-MASS COMPOUNDS

An interface for coupling supercritical fluid chromatography to a magn etic sector mass spectrometer was developed and evaluated. The interfa ce is based on direct introduction of the mobile phase, carbon dioxide , into the ion-source of the mass spectrometer. The SFC-MS system was optimized with respect to the signal-to-noise ratio, Under optimized c onditions, the estimated detection limit for n-pentadecane is approxim ately 30 ppm. Spectra obtained in the electron-impact ionization mode show a very good similarity with library spectra. The performance of t he SFC-MS system was evaluated by the analysis of a number of test mix tures. A sample containing several low molecular mass, thermally unsta ble compounds, which could neither be analyzed by GC-MS nor by LC-MS, was analyzed. Also for the analysis of high molecular mass compounds, the coupled system showed a good performance.