Agilent's 6490 Triple Quadrupole LC/MS System with iFunnel technology is designed to improve the process of atmospheric pressure ion sampling, driving sensitivity gains for most applications.
It's high sensitivity makes it particularly useful for environmental applications where parts-per-trillion sensitivity often is required.
Other high-sensitivity applications include the pharmaceutical arena, with needs such as microdosing, detection of inhaled drugs and dried-blood-spot analysis.
The system has a 25 per cent smaller footprint than previous models, with a sensitivity specification that is 10 times higher.
iFunnel technology relies on Agilent Jet Stream technology thermal-gradient focusing to create a high abundance of accessible gas-phase ions.
These ions are then drawn into the mass spectrometer through a Hexabore Capillary sampling array - six parallel capillaries that accept nearly 12 times more ion-rich atmospheric gas than previous systems.
The ions are focused and separated from the gas by a Dual Ion Funnel assembly.
The first high-pressure funnel removes most of the gas and focuses the ions into the second low-pressure funnel, which removes the remainder of the gas so that the ions can enter the Q1 optics.
The instrument also has a new curved, tapered collision cell that allows a compact system design and reduces noise to help improve overall sensitivity.
Combined with the 1290 Infinity UHPLC system, the 1290/6490 system with Masshunter software delivers a high level of quantitative analytical LC/MS performance.
It has the ability to detect molecules at the zeptomole (10-21 mole) level.
The iFunnel technology also enables a linear dynamic range that extends to six orders of magnitude for many compounds.
Routine access to these levels of sensitivity creates new opportunities for clinical, food safety and protein/peptide quantification, and improves general assay robustness and/or streamline sample preparation.