52 Agilent 6400 Series Triple Quad LC/MS Concepts Guide
3 Agilent Triple Quadrupole MS and Sensitivity
LC/MS ion sources
Expected
sensitivity
When the Multimode source is operated as an ESI or APCI
source only, no loss in sensitivity is found for the compounds
studied. For many compounds run in mixed mode, an equal
signal response (compared to single mode operation) or
sensitivity gain can be achieved.
However, studies also show that when operating the Multimode
source in ESI and APCI simultaneously, there can be a loss of
sensitivity up to a factor of two for some compounds.
Therefore, weighing the benefits of running analyses in both
modes simultaneously versus a potential loss in sensitivity is
important. For most applications, a loss in sensitivity of less
than 2 is negligible.