A Concise Review on Hyphenated Techniques: Liquid Chromatography Coupled Mass Spectroscopy (Lc-Ms/Ms)

Hyphenated techniques combine spectroscopic and chromatographic methods like LC/MS for toxicology, drug monitoring, pharmacokinetic studies, and bioanalysis with interfaces like APCI and ESI for natural product analysis. Mass spectroscopy (MS) is an analytical technique used to determine the m/e ratio of charged analytes, calculate particle masses, and reveal chemical structures using ionization sources. HPLC and mass spectrometry coupling is complex due to high vacuum requirements, but interfaces like TSP, CFAB, API, and ESI overcome this, integrating detectors with liquid chromatographic separations. LC-MS is one of the hyphenated analytical methods that combine mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography for complex mixture analysis in biological, environmental, and pharmacological materials. It includes mobile phase reservoirs, pumps, degassers, auto samplers, columns, and detectors, with UV being the most common for stability and sensitivity. During the optimization stage, initial conditions such as resolution, peak shape, plate counts asymmetry, capacity factor, elution time, detection limits, limit of quantification, and overall analyte quantification ability are optimized. LC-MS/MS is a popular bioanalysis method for measuring medication concentrations in biological samples, making it the preferred quantitative analysis method between drug discovery and development. Validation of method by various parameters like accuracy precision etc. Applications of LC-MS in various fields like in structural elucidation.