Reduction in Extraction Efficiency of Charged Particles from the Ion Source as the Cause of Matrix Effects in the GC-MS Analysis of Drugs*

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that the ion response of a compound can be suppressed by the presence of a large amount of a coeluting substance in a gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric (GC-MS) system. In the present study, the change in the ion current of a constant amount of diazepam-d5 in the presence of a 100-fold amount of diazepam was used to monitor this condition in the Hewlett Packard mass selective detector (MSD). It was observed that a reduced recovery of ions occurred when the potentials of the MSD source elements were established by the autotune algorithm. Increasing the ion focus or the entrance lens potentials or both increased the recovery of the ion current of diazepam-d5 in the presence of large amounts of diazepam. The data suggested that the decreased recovery of ion current observed when the autotune source parameters were used was due to insufficient energy on the focusing lenses to extract a constant fraction of the ions from the source when a high concentration of molecules was present.

Detection of multiple steroidal compounds in synthetic urine using comprehensive gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC×GC-MS) combined with a molecularly imprinted polymer clean-up protocol

“…This may result in ion suppression (or enhancement) of the target ions and/or 'cross-talking' between ions of similar mass-to-charge (m/z). [7][8][9] This may inhibit the detection or accurate quantisation. Therefore, high-throughput procedures can require a considerable degree of instrument method optimisation.…”