Development of a nebulizer for a sheathless interfacing of NanoHPLC and ICPMS

P. Giusti , Ryszard Lobinski (1) , Joanna Szpunar (1) , Dirk Schaumlöffel (2)

1 IPREM - Institut des sciences analytiques et de physico-chimie pour l'environnement et les materiaux
2 LCABIE - Laboratoire de Chimie Analytique Bio-Inorganique et Environnement

A novel nebulizer (nDS-200) working at sample uptake rates of less than 500 nL min-1 was developed for a sheathless interfacing of nanoHPLC (75-μm column i.d.) with ICPMS. It was based on a hollow fused-silica needle of which the tip (i.d. 10 μm, o.d. 20 μm) centered in a 254-μm-i.d. sapphire orifice. The nebulizer, equipped with a 3-cm3 drain-free vaporization chamber, enabled a stable introduction into an ICP of aqueous mobile phases containing up to 95% acetonitrile at eluent flow rates between 50 and 450 nL min-1. The low dead volume of the interface resulted in a peak width of 1.3 s (at half-height) and the entirely preserved chromatographic resolution. An example application of the coupling to the analysis of a tryptic digest of a SIP18 protein containing two to nine selenomethionine residues was described. The absolute detection limit was 25 fg (80Se), which allowed the detection of low-abundant selenopeptides at the femtomole level. In contrast to electrospray MS, the ICPMS detection in nanoHPLC is unaffected by the coeluting matrix and concomitant compounds and offers an elegant method for the detection and quantification of minor heteroelement-containing species prior to or in parallel with ESI MS analysis. © 2006 American Chemical Society.

Domaines: Chimie analytique

P. Giusti, Ryszard Lobinski, Joanna Szpunar, Dirk Schaumlöffel. Development of a nebulizer for a sheathless interfacing of NanoHPLC and ICPMS. Analytical Chemistry, 2006, 78 (3), pp.965--971. ⟨10.1021/ac051656j⟩. ⟨hal-01560773⟩