3 ms·
Mass specs can detect down to the ten thousands? IIRC or so molecules.
by throwawaymaths 3y ago
Mass specs can detect down to the ten thousands? IIRC or so molecules.
- londons_explore 3y agoBut I don't think they can do that at the same time as having trillions of some other uninteresting molecule like water in them. It's basically a dynamic range problem.
- sseagull 3y agoMass specs would have this problem, yes. That's why they are usually paired with chromatography of some sort (usually GC/MS or LC/MS). The GC or LC more or less reduce a mixture into components, which are fed into the mass spectrometer to analyze what those components are.
- throwawaymaths 3y agoYep the Ms that does this is tethered to chromatography first (sometimes even 2 or 3 different separation schemes in tandem)