instrument equipped with a modified Agilent 7890A GC system having
a split/splitless injector and a dual-stage, quadruple-jet modulator.
The Leco GC×GC had a 30 m length, 0.25 mm inner diameter (i.d.),
0.25 μm film thickness RTX-1 column (Restek, USA) as the first
dimension and a 2 m length, 0.1 mm i.d., 0.1 μm film thickness
BPX-50 column as the second dimension (Restek).
GC×GC-ENCI-TOFMS
and GC×GC-EI-TOFMS analyses were both performed using a Zoex
(Zoex Corp.) instrument. This instrument was a modified Agilent 7890A
GC system with a loop thermal modulator supplied by Zoex. The TOFMS
was made by TOFWERK, Switzerland, and it was equipped with both an
EI source and ENCI source. The column set and temperature program
were similar to those used for GC×GC-μECD measurements.
When used with either an EI or ENCI source, the TOFMS exhibited a
mass precision of ± 5 mmu for the target masses that we investigated.
Further instrument details are reported in
with the bases for the comparison of the combination of GC×GC-μECD
and GC×GC-ENCI-TOFMS with conventional GC×GC-EI-TOFMS.