Study on higher sensitivity for analysis of pesticide residues in foods by using GC-MS/MS (2)
Introduction
The analysis of pesticide residues in foods requires the separation and detection of trace amounts of target pesticides present in complex matrices, and therefore, analytical instruments used for such measurements must have high performance. The GC-MS/MS method is effective for simultaneous analysis of multiple components in complex matrices, and is currently used by many analytical institutions as a general analytical method. Naturally, detection sensitivity can differ depending on the analytical instrument used, but various methods exist to increase the sensitivity of conventional analytical methods. The EPIS (Enhanced Performance Ion Source), a high-performance EI ion source developed exclusively for JEOL‘s quadrupole MS systems, uses a newly designed source magnet and chamber block to increase the amount of ions produced within the ion source chamber. The instrumental detection limit (IDL) of this ion source for SRM measurement is less than 0.4 fg (OFN 1 fg, n=8), which is very effective for the analysis of trace analytes. In this study, the results of using the EPIS as an ion source on the detection sensitivity in an analysis similar to MSTips No. 413 (application of cold splitless injection method) are presented.