New Mass Spectrometry and Market Inventory

According to the statistics of the Instrument Information Network, over the past five years, major mass spectrometry instrument companies have launched more than 100 mass-produced new products related to mass spectrometry, and more and more manufacturers have joined the competition in the mass spectrometry market.

Looking at new mass spectrometry products, mass spectrometry technology presents two different directions of development. One direction is to integrate various mass spectrometers into more complex ones, further improve the performance of mass spectrometry instruments and meet the needs of high-end research; the second direction is The existing mass spectrometry technology is simpler, easier to use, and cheaper, so that more ordinary users can “enjoy”.

Thermo Fisher is the representative of direction one. Since the introduction of commercial Orbitrap mass spectrometry products in 2005, Orbitrap has worked with linear ion traps (LTQ), LTQ Voles, quadrupoles (Q), etc. The mass analyzer implements the concatenation. This year, Thermo Fisher also introduced Orbitrap Fusion, a triple-play system that integrates quadrupole, Orbitrap, and linear ion traps for the first time, and three mass analyzers that work simultaneously. Users can obtain high analytical mass fluxes while obtaining high-resolution mass spectrometry information and solve the problem of low abundance protein recognition in proteomics.

While everyone is chasing higher resolutions and higher sensitivity, direction two has also begun to attract attention from manufacturers. In October 2013, Waters released a global mass spectrometry detector, Acquity QDa, which is the same size as the liquid-phase UV detector. It is a bright spot for miniaturization. The mass spectrometer detector is based on the single quadrupole technology and is only equipped with an ESI source (electrospray ion source) with a mass range of 30-1250 Da, which can achieve 4 orders of magnitude dynamic range and can replace 80% of conventional single quadrupole LC/MS. Instrument of work. The biggest feature of Acquity QDa is one-touch operation, which means that it can be used immediately without professional staff.

In fact, as early as 2011, Microsaic Systems of the United Kingdom launched a similar product, the 3500MiD, which also received the 2011 R&D 100 Award. At Pittcon in 2013, Microsaic Systems announced an upgrade of 4000 MiD. The 4000MiD uses micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology to chip all mass spectrometer components. It is also a single quadrupole mass spectrometer, also equipped with an ESI source, with a mass range of 50-800 Da and a dynamic range of up to 3 orders of magnitude.

An industry expert told the Instrument Information Network, "This type of mass spectrometer is particularly suitable for users of synthetic chemistry." The reasons are: First, compared to traditional mass spectrometry instruments, this type of mass spectrometer is relatively inexpensive, and according to Microsaic Systems, its operation The cost is only 10% of traditional mass spectrometry. Second, this type of mass spectrometer is plug-and-play, and operation and maintenance are simple. Mike Harrington, Waters Europe and Asia Pacific vice president of operations, commented, “The emergence of the ACQUITY QDa has brought separation science to a whole new dimension and will change the 'rules of the game' that separate the science market.”

Regarding the 2013 Chinese Mass Spectrometry Market, industry sources told Instrument Information Network, “This year, the demand for high-resolution mass spectrometry in all areas of the Chinese market has grown strongly. In addition to the proteomics research and scientific research market, the government market that oversees food safety supervision is the most growth. On the other hand, due to the global economic weakness, the demand for large multinational pharmaceutical companies in China and CRO agencies shrank in 2013, and purchasing power was lower than before, while demand from domestic Chinese pharmaceutical companies grew strongly.”

Finally, we talk about home-made mass spectrometry. In 2013, domestic mass spectrometer manufacturers did not launch new products, but they brought us surprises in mergers and acquisitions and talent introduction. In terms of mergers and acquisitions, Tianrui Instrument unilaterally increased its capital to Xiamen Mass Spectrometry Instruments and Meters Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Xiamen Mass Spectrometry) by 10 million yuan. After the capital increase was completed, Tianrui Instrument held a 51% stake in Xiamen Mass Spectrometry and became the reality of Xiamen Mass Spectrometry. Controller. Xiamen Mass Spectrometry was established based on the mass spectrometry results of Xiamen University. Its earliest mass spectrometry development dates back to the 1970s. In recent years, it has made significant achievements in the development of time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOF). It is reported that although Tianrui Instruments has introduced three types of mass spectrometry products, they are quadrupole mass spectrometers. This Tianrui instrument injection Xiamen Xiamen mass spectrometer is to see the Xiamen mass spectrometry in the time-of-flight mass spectrometry, hoping to expand its application in the field of clinical diagnosis.

Another merger is an East-West analysis of the acquisition of Australian GBC. GBC has ICP-TOF-MS technology, although this technology is not mainstream in the current ICP-MS market, but in the future, East-West analysis can transfer GBC TOF technology to liquid and temperament products. It is reported that East-West analysis is committed to the development of a full two-dimensional GC/MS. It is believed that with the help of GBC's TOF technology, the development of this project will be accelerated.

In terms of talents, manufacturers involved in mass spectrometry manufacturing have been tapping talent in recent years. This year, Concentration Technology "dig" the original Agilent mass spectrometer expert Li Gangqiang as the company's chief scientist of scientific instruments. In the East-West analysis, the former Waters senior maintenance engineer Gu Haoliang was appointed as the technical director of the East West Analytical R&D Department.

It is believed that with the increase of resource integration efforts, the enrichment of talents, and the country's support for mass spectrometry, it is expected that in the next few years we will see a large number of domestic mass spectrometry products being introduced to the market.

The following is an introduction to some of the mass spectrometers introduced this year.

In the first half of the year, new mass spectrometry products Shimadzu triple quadrupole LC/MS LCMS-8050

Since entering the triple quadrupole liquid market for the first time in 2010, Shimadzu has launched four products. The LCMS-8050 is the latest product in Shimadzu's ultra-high-speed mass spectrometry series. Based on the original LCMS-8030 and LCMS-8040, the product is once again optimized for high-speed performance, enabling 30,000u/s scanning speed and 5mses positive and negative polarity switching times. In addition, the LCMS-8050 uses a newly designed heated ESI source, which promotes solvent removal by increasing the heating gas around the atomizing gas, and uses the new collision cell UFsweeper® III to optimize the collision cell pressure to increase the CID efficiency, thereby significantly increasing the sensitivity. . 【detailed】

Agilent 7000C Triple Quadrupole GC/MS System (GC/MS/MS)

The 7000C system introduced this time uses the Extractor ion source technology for the 5977 Series GC/MSD that was introduced earlier this year. The new Extractor source adds an Extractor lens, which allows more ions to enter the mass analyzer and improves detection sensitivity. The 7000C system has an octafluoronaphthalene detection limit as low as 4 fg. In addition, the system incorporates the intelligent features of the 7890B GC and 7000C mass spectrometers, supplemented with new tools from Agilent's MassHunter software, enabling rapid method development, improved method optimization, and drastically reduced energy consumption. 【detailed】

Waters Latest Mass Spectrometer Detector ACQUITY QDa

ACQUITY QDa is a mass spectrometer detector specifically designed for liquid chromatography that Waters released to the world on October 7, 2013. It is a single quadrupole-based mass spectrometer detector equipped with ESI, mass range 30-1250Da, and can achieve 4 orders of magnitude dynamic range, which can replace 80% of the work of the traditional single quadrupole LC/MS. The most important thing is that the ACQUITY QDa is very easy to operate. With one-click activation, the user does not need to set or correct any parameters of the instrument. Qualitative analysis of the sample can be performed after 6.5 minutes of power on, and quantitative analysis can be performed after 22 minutes. 【detailed】

Bruker Ultra High Resolution SolariX-XR FTMS

Bruker introduced the solariX-FTMS in 2010. The main technological innovations of the solariX-XR FTMS launched this time are focused on the core components of the detector. We have broken through the traditional design to create a new “harmonious trap” and achieved a resolution of the mass spectrum up to 10 million. level. This extreme resolution beyond the limit allows us to see things that we have never seen before and get data that was previously unimaginable. In addition to the conventional mass information, isotope fine structure information of the compound can also be obtained.