Superior Mass Accuracy, Mass Resolution, Sensitivity and Speed Enable Life Science Studies

Agilent Technologies Inc. has introduced the Agilent 6220 Accurate-Mass time-of-flight (TOF) and 6520 Accurate-Mass quadrupole time-of-flight (Q-TOF) liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) systems, delivering unmatched mass accuracy, mass resolution, sensitivity and speed for proteomics, metabolomics, product degradation and other complex experiments.

The new 6220 TOF and 6520 Q-TOF have added proprietary 32 Gbit/second high-speed data acquisition electronics that dramatically improve mass resolution to 20,000. Additionally, the new products incorporate proprietary dual-gain analog to digital (ADC) time-of-flight electronics for a tenfold improvement of dynamic range -- now approaching up to five orders of magnitude.

The new Agilent 6520 Q-TOF has industry-leading performance in the most important categories: attomole sensitivity; better than 2-ppm MS mass accuracy -- approaching FTMS mass accuracy; better than 5-ppm MS/MS mass accuracy -- much better than FTMS mass accuracy at fast spectral acquisition rate; Tenfold improvement in in-spectra dynamic range without loss of sensitivity; mass resolution to 20,000 -- not dependent on spectral acquisition rate; fast data acquisition (greater than 10 MS/MS spectra/sec) compatible with fast LC chromatography; and broad mass range from m/z 25 to 20,000.

Similarly, when operating in MS mode only, the Agilent 6220 TOF incorporates the same high-speed electronics and ADC TOF technology to deliver the same benefits as when operating in MS/MS mode. Targeted applications include product degradation studies, biomarker discovery, metabolomics and confirmation of compounds in synthetic chemistry labs. The 6220 TOF now uses the Agilent MassHunter Workstation software with advanced data acquisition and qualitative and quantitative data analysis capabilities. These capabilities include unique data-mining functionality based on powerful molecular feature extraction and molecular formula generation algorithms, facilitating identification of compounds in complex mixtures.

Both the Agilent 6520 QTOF and 6220 TOF are available now.