Chromatography Forum

Hello everyone,

I have the MS conditions from Waters Xevo TQS micro. I would like to do the migration to a Shimadzu 8050. The problem is that the nomenclature and the structure of instruments are not the same. For example, Waters use the terms: desolvatation temperature, source temperature, cone gas flow rate, and desolvatation gas flow rate. Shimadzu use the terms: heat block température, desolvatation temperature , interface temperature, drying gas flow rate, heating gas flow rate and nebulizing gas flow rate . How can I do the migration ? Or how can I choose/determine the best temperatures and gas flow to optimize the analysis of my samples? Thank you in advance

This is always very tricky. The sources are also of different configurations and even measurement methods (pressures, flows, location where temperature is measured), so things such as gas flow rates and temperatures do not translate directly anyway between manufacturers or models.

My suggestion is to ask the instrument manufacturer for their recommended settings based on your chromatography solvents and flow rate (and possibly even for their whitepapers for the method you are running). That should get you very close.

The more crucial settings to optimize are for collision cell (voltage and pressure (Waters uses gas flow)). I have found collision energies do not translate at all. Small errors here create large signal differences. Again, a whitepaper from the manufacturer is the best starting point.

I am also facing the same issue as i am not getting the parameters like.
Capillary voltage (kV), Cone voltage (V), RF (V), Extractor (V), Waters is having the source temperature very less and we were getting the good ionization while in Shimadzu we do not have more options to do some trials for increase or decrease in ionization or to increase or decrease in the adduct formation.
May be the team which is supporting (In india Spinco) engineers are not that much qualified or something is missing.
Not know which one is correct but only one thing is fact that we have lot of challanges in Shimadzu LC-MS

No two instruments are the same. When transferring a method to a different instrument you can use the original settings as suggestions only. Start at the beginning and optimize the HPLC method on the 'new' instrument first. Once that is complete and you have good resolution and peak shapes, then move on to optimize the MS settings for the new sample. To do this, we assume nothing (as the instruments are different) and evaluate the settings one-at-a-time to optimize each parameter.

I'd do it this way: if you know the Waters instrument, consider which parameters have been changed from the obvious defaults. If you're just using the obvious defaults then there is probably nothing strange about the analytes that requires special treatment, in which case you simply use the defaults that Shimadzu recommend (for the same flow-rate).
If, however, you've had to modify your Waters tune-file because high desolvation temperature caused the analyte to degrade, or something like that, then you will want to experiment with altering the nearest corresponding items in the Shimadzu system (i.e. the temperatures of spray chamber components).
Yes, collision energies are the exception. These are the one bit that you'll need to reoptimise, probably from scratch, unless Shimadzu are feeling helpful and want to undermine their competitor by offering translation-advice.