What are the current solutions for interfacing supercritical fluid chromatography and mass spectrometry?

Supercritical fluid chromatography – Mass spectrometry: Recent evolution and current trends

“…For all these reasons, the providers of SFC instruments have developed several interface schemes over the years (Fig. 1), able to solve these different issues [24,25].…”

“…The most common interface available on the market is known as the "pre-BPR splitter with sheath pump", commercialized by Waters and Agilent [25] (see Fig. 1D).…”

“…This interface offers the obvious advantage of reducing the possible precipitation of samples in the mobile phase. In addition, thanks to the flexible BPR regulation and the presence of the sheath pump, it also allows sending a highly suitable mobile phase flow rate and composition to the ESI sources, thus producing an excellent sensitivity [25].…”

“…Moreover, the last tubing entering into the ionization source passes through the BPR, which is heated at a relatively high temperature (around 50°C), to limit decompression cooling phenomenon and solute precipitation. Until now, this interface has been rarely employed for real applications, and therefore its advantages and drawbacks are still not well identified [25].…”

“…Besides these two interfaces, there are also a few other solutions that have been described for hyphenating UHPSFC and MS, but they present some major issues, making them inferior to the ones previously described. More details on the different interfaces currently available can be found in a recently published review from our group [25].…”