Chromatography Forum

hi everyone!

We are trying out daughter Scan for the first time, and we came across the following options for data acquisition types:

. Continnum (we get this one)

. Centroid (we know this one has well)

. MCA (Multi Channel Analysis) now this one we canT really understand what it does.

We have read the manual and search online but we just dont get it what it does exactly.

Does someone understand this? Can some give an easy short example/demonstration/explanation?

thanks you all very much! may the gods of science be with you!

As I know it, MCA is usually employed in infusion and consists to sum the acquired spectra for several seconds or even minutes, thereby gaining sensitivity. In daughter scan you would typically use it during the tuning phase to get a clearer view of the various fragments generated at a certain collision energy.

On the AB Sciex Analyst software there is a check box for MCA and you can use it to sum the spectra generated when ramping through the collision energy voltage so you get an idea of what fragments will be possible from the parent mass. You could also use it for other things but it mainly just sums all of the data whether you leave all parameters the same or if you are ramping a variable to see what it will produce. Then you can go back and optimize on a single daughter mass after you know which ones will be present.