3D cube could enhance gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

The gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) process could be enhanced by a newly developed visualisation tool, a three-dimensional cube developed by scientists at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.

Researchers in the departments of chemistry and mathematics and computer science worked on the idea, which aims to improve gas chromatography as well as supercritical-fluid and high-pressure liquid chromatography.

They suggest that their findings are likely to prove advantageous in selecting replacement columns when adjusting the resolution of a complex mixture.

This is typically done by changing the selectivity of separation, they write in their report, which is published in Analytical Chemistry, the most widely cited journal in the analytical chemistry industry.

By combining linear salvation energy relationships, kappa-kappa plots and the concept of effective selectivity put forward by Zhao and Carr, they developed a three-dimensional means of determining which systems are likely to provide different selectivity, a process they have named the system selectivity cube.