Laboratory of Structural Organic Chemistry and Biology, CNRS-UMR 7613, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, 4 Place Jussieu, Paris Cedex 05, France.
In the past ten years, mass spectrometry have been developped increasingly to provide new analytical potentialities which continue to grow with advances in technology and in rationalization of the ion chemistry in the gas phase. Now, this method is used to answer many questions from various areas from chemistry to derivative domains. (e.g., environment, pharmacology, ecology...). Particularly, sensibility and detection limits, selectivity and specificity, m/z range and m/z resolution characterize mass spectrometry properties. Sample introduction may mainly involve direct probe into a low pressure source, inlet membrane or a molecular leak in atmospheric source. Combination with separative methods (e.g. GC, HPLC and CZE) has been also shown very useful. From volatile molecules, the conventional IE/CI ionisation modes in the gas phase can be completed by using glow discharge and MAB modes which have been explorated for producing either diagnostic fragmentations (for MS library) or intact molecular species (for MS/MS library). On the other hand, due to the advent of desorption ionisation techniques as ESI and MALDI, detection of the chemical and biological agents now can be achieved independently of the molecular weight of these large labil molecules. Various small instruments were developed either as benchtop or as mobile mass spectrometer; linear quadrupole and ion trap, as well as reTOF/MS (and hybrides), and new generations of larger as multisector tandems and FT/ICR. Certains of these ones allow to perform MS/MS experiments for structural investigations. Finally, creativity of the "Man of the Art" in physic and chemistry permits to open the mass spectrometry to a large analytical possibility especially applied to answer quickly concerning detection of various chemical agents.