Delivers Power of Ms/ms in a Compact, Lc Detector-style Platform

Waters Corporation has introduced a new UPLC?/MS/MS system at the 54th Annual Conference of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. Waters® ACQUITY? TQD puts the power of Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography/Tandem Mass Spectrometry (UPLC/MS/MS) into the hands of chromatographers. This UPLC/MS/MS system takes the inherent selectivity and robustness of tandem quadrupole MS/MS and combines it with the speed and sensitivity provided by UPLC technology to give chromatographers significant productivity advantages.

The ACQUITY TQD is a benchtop, ultra-compact, tandem-quadrupole, atmospheric pressure ionization (API) mass detector-based system specifically designed for routine UPLC/MS/MS analyses. With first-of-its-kind IntelliStart? technology to integrate its internal calibration fluidics and advanced diagnostics software, the system automatically tunes and calibrates the ACQUITY TQ Detector and conducts full UPLC/MS/MS performance checks. This allows chromatographers to easily and confidently acquire UPLC/MS/MS data in routine analytical and open access applications. In particular, Waters ACQUITY TQ Detector has been optimized for such applications as: high throughput drug metabolism studies, food safety and quality testing, environmental monitoring, and clinical therapeutic drug monitoring.

In addition to its ease-of-use, the ACQUITY TQD also breaks new ground as the industry's first complete UPLC/MS/MS system to feature Waters Connections® INSIGHT?, an intelligent device diagnostic monitoring service that increases system uptime by securely collecting information about instrument conditions and then encrypting and transmitting it to secure proxy servers at Waters. In this way, preventive maintenance procedures can be performed before the scientist is even aware of the need for them.

The ACQUITY TQD utilizes T-Wave technology to enable rapid MS/MS acquisition speeds delivering higher productivity in UPLC and multi-residue applications. The new instrument design and its state-of-the art electronics are provided in a compact package that is 25% smaller than the highly-successful Quattro micro? mass spectrometer. The rapid MS/MS capability (5ms dwell times) and fast polarity switching of the ACQUITY TQD make it an ideal system for high speed quantification when coupled with the ACQUITY UPLC? System on the front-end. The patented ZSpray? (dual orthogonal sampling) interface - an industry-leading source design for robust LC/MS includes, as standard, multi-mode ESCi® ionization switching for atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) and electrospray (ESI) ionization in the same run for added productivity. Dedicated IonSABRE? APCI and atmospheric pressure photo-ionization (APPI) probes are also available. System control and data acquisition can be performed with either Waters MassLynx? 4.1 or Empower? 2 Software. This delivers MS/MS capability to Empower network customers for the first time.

Tandem quadrupole mass spectrometers are the industry standard for the quantification of components in complex mixtures and are widely used in pharmaceutical, biological, chemical and environmental applications for the trace level analysis of active substances and impurities. In addition to today's announcement, Waters also offers two other tandem quadrupole MS/MS systems the Quattro Premier?, which is designed for the most demanding, high performance, ultra trace level UPLC and UPLC/MS/MS applications and the Quattro micro which is designed for robust HPLC/MS/MS assays. In addition to tandem quadrupole mass spectrometers, Waters also offers a full range of mass spectrometry solutions including single, time-of-flight and quadrupole time-of-flight solutions for UPLC/MS and UPLC/MS/MS.