The firm says that its EC systems (Coulochem, CoulArray and DiscovArray) can be easily integrated with most mass spectrometer or LCMS (liquid chromatography mass spectrometry) systems and can be used as a powerful tool to oxidise/ionise many different types of compounds.
"Many bio-analytical groups suffer from having to analyse a number of poorly ionising compounds or samples in a mass spectrometer," according to ESA which maintains that typical ionisation sources (Electrospray, APCI, or even APPI) are often not enough to ionise difficult compounds for analysis. This necessitates a lengthy and risky derivatisation project in order to analyse such compounds.
Another problem is that the mass spectrometer by itself may be unable to analyse every component of a sample containing multiple compounds.
To address these issues, ESA 's EC systems utilise very simple oxidation reactions to ionise, or otherwise oxidise, compounds to make them amenable to MS analysis. They are utilised in-line with the mass spectrometer to ionise or otherwise react poorly ionising compounds.