Chromatography Forum

We currently synthesizing small molecules in medicinal chemistry division.

Recently we got a project to synthesize sugars, oligosaccharides and lipids. Molecular weight of our synthesized molecules will be in the range upto 3000 Da.

We are planning to buy a mass spec system for the analysis of the above.

Can anybody suggest me whether LC-Triple Quad systems can be used or we need to buy a LC-QTOF systems ?

Earlier scientists used Maldi-Tof for the same applications and you can see a lot of publications on this.

Off late scientists have changed from Maldi-Tof to other MS systems and
in my opinion you can Triple Quad systems for the same applications.

I have seen a lot of papers in which scientists have used Triple Quad systems. But only one thing is sugards , oligosaccharides will be ionized
in negative ion mode and you can analyze in ESI-ve ion mode.

Where as lipids can be analyzed in single ion charged state.

If budget is not a hassle to buy a good system then my preference will be Q-Tof or otherwise you can go for Triple Quad systems.

It would be much easier with a Q-TOF due to the higher mass accuracy and full scan capabilities but as you will only have mixtures of synthesized molecules (probably polymers?) then the triple quadrupole should be good enough (only some of them though will go up to 3000 m/z so if you have single charged ions you should think more about it)...

What type of oligosaccharides will you be analyzing. Perhaps
we can post some chromatograms that might be useful to you.

I do agree that we can use Q-Tof but since it is a synthesized molecule where can I get standards while using Q-Tof. Instead I want to use deconvolution software to make multiple charged species to single charged ions so that I can use Triple Quads comfortably to analyze.