Directly‐Linked Gas Chromatography–Infrared–Mass Spectrometry (GC/IR/MS)

Abstract

Directly linked gas chromatography‐infrared‐mass spectrometry (GC/IR/MS) is well established as a technique that fills a unique niche in the field of complex mixture analysis and structure elucidation. Although the method is not well suited for trace analysis, it has proved especially useful for analytical applications that are not sample limited. Commercial analysis systems based on this approach have gained acceptance and it is expected that continuing advances in the fields of chromatography and spectral detection will lead to improved GC/IR/MS systems in the future. This article reviews the history of GC/IR/MS development and briefly surveys the various approaches including lightpipe and matrix isolation methods. The use of complementary information is stressed and multidimensional GC/IR/MS discussed. Examples of applications include flavor and fragrance analysis, isomer identification, and pyrolysis product identification.

Relationships in Gas Chromatography—Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy—Comprehensive and Multilinear Analysis

“…FTIR's competence in hyphenation with other detectors in GC [3], allows integration of MS and FTIR for assignment of analyte structures and benefits complex mixture analysis [12]. These techniques can be applied by use of separate GC-MS and GC-FTIR instruments or as a hyphenated GC-FTIR/MS system [13][14][15][16]. However, GC-FTIR has not attained the same level of adoption as GC-MS due to performance criteria which include; (1) lower sensitivity compared to MS, (2) inferior dynamic detection range compared to MS, (3) relatively difficult quantification and (4) extensive MS databases available for component identification [17].…”