Coupling Liquid-Phase Separations with Mass Spectrometry
Since HPLC technology matured in the early 1980s, its coupling with mass
spectrometry remained a challenge for some time. Bringing the analytes out of
liquid phase into the gas phase, ionizing them, and transferring the molecular
ions into ultrahigh vacuum, is far more difficult for liquid-phase separations (LC)
than for gas-phase separations (GC). The field has seen multiple iterations in
LC/MS interfacing methodology since the 1970s.