Triple quadrupole linear ion trap mass spectrometer for the analysis of small molecules and macromolecules

Recently, linear ion traps (LITs) have been combined with quadrupole (Q), time-of-flight (TOF) and Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) mass spectrometry (MS). LITs can be used either as ion accumulation devices or as commercially available, stand-alone mass spectrometers with MSn capabilities. The combination of triple quadrupole MS with LIT technology in the form of an instrument of configuration QqLIT, using axial ejection, is particularly interesting, because this instrument retains the classical triple quadrupole scan functions such as selected reaction monitoring (SRM), product ion (PI), neutral loss (NL) and precursor ion (PC) while also providing access to sensitive ion trap experiments. For small molecules, quantitative and qualitative analysis can be performed using the same instrument. In addition, for peptide analysis, the enhanced multiply charged (EMC) scan allows an increase in selectivity, while the time-delayed fragmentation (TDF) scan provides additional structural information. Various methods of operating the hybrid instrument are described for the case of the commercial Q TRAP (AB/MDS Sciex) and applications to drug metabolism analysis, quantitative confirmatory analysis, peptides analysis and automated nanoelectrospray (ESI-chip-MS) analysis are discussed.