Welcome to another episode
of Behind the Science,
Rock Star edition.
I'm your host,
Jennifer Fournier.
A friend of mine got me into
listening to soft melodies,
which play long notes.
Interesting fact on long notes.
Apparently, Kenny G
holds the Guinness record
for holding the longest
note on a saxophone--
an E flat for over 45 minutes.
That is a long time.
Holding long flowing notes
help create soft, smooth music.
So in this episode of
Behind the Science,
I want to tell you about
the soft ionization
techniques for GC,
and how they're
useful in pesticide analysis.
So let's go meet our
version of Kenny G.
Kari, how are you?
Hi, Jen.
I'm good.
How are you?
Great.
I'm glad I found
you, because I've
been using some pest control
products around my home lately.
And after learning
what pesticides
can do to the bee population,
I want to make sure
that I'm using a safe product.
You've come to the right place.
Actually, one of the
pesticides that's
found in a lot of home
pest control products
is called Bifenthrin,
and it's known
to be harmful to
the bee population.
And it can also be
a very hard compound
to analyze using typical
electron impact
gas chromatography.
So how would you test for it?
So we would use our
atmospheric pressure
gas chromatography, 
or APGC system,
which I can show you right here.
That'd be great.
So, Jen, electron
impact ionization
is an ionization process
where the compounds are
being hit with high energy
electrons to produce ions.
Since the compounds
are being hit,
they tend to fragment
before entering
into the mass spectrometer.
Since the parent ion is no
longer intact for analysis,
this can cause decreased
selectivity and sensitivity,
leading to false positives.
But we have a different solution
called atmospheric pressure
gas chromatography, or APGC,
that is a much softer ionization technique.
APGC is a soft
ionization technique
where the charge is transferred
to the compound
from a corona discharge.
By ionizing the compound
with a transfer mechanism,
as opposed to impacting, the
compounds do not fragment.
This generates an ion
on the parent molecule,
rather than a fragment.
The analysis is
much more selective
and sensitivity is enhanced.
Wow, Kari, that's
really interesting work.
I like what you are able to get with
soft ionization techniques.
But I have to tell you,
I still do a lot of work
with electrospray ionization.
Do I need a dedicated
system for APGC?
No, using the APGC
source, you can actually
do both APGC and ESI, or LC,
on the same mass spectrometer.
We have the set up here.
I can show you how easy it is
to switch over between the two.
Yeah, let's do it.
I'm going to get out of the way.
It's really that simple.
Wow, it really is that simple.
But I don't know if I
can be as fast as you.
Now, I can add a new instrument
that plays soft notes to our rock band.
So if I want to gently ionize
a GC compound,
I can use atmospheric
pressure gas chromatography.
It creates fewer fragments
and increases the selectivity
of the analysis.
Plus, how great is it
that you can quickly
swap out the source,
making it so versatile?
And as promised, we have an
application note for this.
Check out the link below
for more information
on what we discussed today.
And join us next time
for another episode
of Behind the Science Rock Star.
