Qualitative and Quantitative Advancements of QTOF Performance: The SCIEX ZenoTOF 7600 System

Volker Kruft, SCIEX, Darmstadt, Germany (volker.kruft@sciex.com)

A novel hybrid collision cell is at the heart of the technological innovations introduced with the SCIEX ZenoTOF 7600 system.

In the past, QTOF mass spectrometers have suffered from duty cycle losses; that is, losses in ion transmission in the ion path. This was mainly due to the mating the continuous beam coming from the quadrupole ion path with time-of-flight (TOF) analysis, a pulsed, discontinuous measurement technique. A series of ion-staging events and reverse-mass sequential ion release, with high-capacity ion traps, have been introduced just after the CID collision cell (Q2) and before the pusher region of the TOF. This allows the duty cycle losses to be mitigated leading to MS/MS sensitivity gains of 4-20 fold (1).

The newly engineered collision cell also has the ability to perform both collision induced dissociation (CID) and electron activated dissociation (EAD) experiments for high-resolution, high sensitivity MS/MS flexibility. Electron kinetic energies can be tuned from 0-25 eV without the use of chemical transfer reagents. This precise tunability means EAD can be performed on a wide range of analytes , from multiply charged peptides to singly-charged small molecules (2,3).

The increase in MS/MS sensitivity, the high speed of MS/MS acquisition (133Hz) and the choice of fragmentation regimes enables improvements in data quality and depth of analysis. Examples of the use of EAD for full structural elucidation in LC time scale of relevant analytes (e.g. lipids) will be discussed and other unique applications of EAD and Zeno trap technology presented.

(1) Loboda A.V., Chernushevich I.V.; J Am Soc Mass Spectrom.; 20: 1342-1348 (2009).

(2) Baba T. et al.; J Am Soc Mass Spectrom.32, 1964-1975 (2021).

(3) Baba T. et al.;Anal. Chem. 2017, 89: 7307–7315 (2017).