SinS - Abstract

Abstract Information :

The identification and structural elucidation of components in complex mixtures and/or matrices is an ongoing challenge in many areas of analytical chemistry including environmental chemistry, forensics, chemical ecology, organic geochemistry and petrochemistry. Conventional approaches to unknown compound identification and structural elucidation include enrichment, (preparative) fraction collection and offline spectroscopic techniques. There are many instances where combining all of these strategies is does not provide sufficient selectivity for an unambiguous identification (e.g., to satisfy Metabolite Standards Initiative Level 1 ID or to meet SWGDRUG recommendations): The mode of operation or the level of resolution of the technique limits the ability to distinguish the analyte from structurally similar or related compounds (positional-, structural- and diastereo- isomers); The nature or complexity of the sample limit the ability to distinguish the analyte of interest; or The quantity of the sample or concentration of the analyte is limited I will present a summary of current applications from the OPCW (chemical warfare agent characterisation), forensics and chemical ecology communities where hyphenated parallel solid-phase GC-FTIR/MS has seen rapid adoption to overcome all of these limitations. I will also explore potential new, GC- and LC- based, applications for this exciting new hyphenated technique in Chromatography.