A moving belt device to couple high-performance liquid chromatography and chemical reaction interface mass...

A device is described to enable selective detection of 13C- and 15N-labeled compounds following separation by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). A thermospray vaporizer deposits the materials eluting from the HPLC column onto a continuously moving endless belt. The belt carries these compounds into the chemical reaction interface, where a microwave-induced helium plasma converts complex organic molecules in the presence of a reactant gas into small stable molecules that are detected by the mass spectrometer. Chromatograms showing only compounds enriched with 13C and 15N can be obtained by subtracting the abundance of naturally occurring isotopes from the observed M + 1 signal. This work demonstrates the feasibility of this approach and encourages its further development.