ABSTRACT
Over 30 years of liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) research has resulted in a considerable number of different interfaces (Ch. 3.2). A variety of LC–MS interfaces have been proposed and built in the various research laboratories, and some of them have been adapted by instrument manufacturers and became commercially available. With the advent in the early 1990's of interfaces based on atmospheric-pressure ionization (API), most of these interfaces have become obsolete. However, in order to appreciate LC–MS, one cannot simply ignore these earlier developments. This chapter is devoted to the older LC–MS interfaces, which is certainly important in understanding the history and development of LC–MS. Attention is paid to principles, instrumentation, and application of the capillary inlet, pneumatic vacuum nebulizers, the moving-belt interface, direct liquid introduction, continuous-flow fast-atom bombardment interfaces, thermospray, and the particlebeam interface. More elaborate discussions on these interfaces can be found in previous editions of this book.
