What is meant by the term mass spectrometry?
In its most basic form, mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique for measuring the mass of single chemical (and atomic) species. In the last few decades, MS has been coupled to the chromatographic methods: gas chromatography (GC) and liquid chromatography (LC) to allow the analysis of chemical mixtures. These so called ‘hyphenated techniques’ of GC-MS and LC-MS are now very common and are to be found as standard techniques in any chemical, biochemical, environmental, forensic and pharmaceutical laboratory. MS instruments have even been taken into space and to Mars! With the development of cheaper multiple sector mass spectrometers, tandem MS (MS/MS) or multistage MS (MSn) are becoming more common. These techniques can be used for structure determination, and in combination with LC-MS (for example), MS/MS is becoming a common place tool for drug discovery and drug metabolism studies.
