Recent developments in liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry and related techniques

This review summarizes the state-of-art in liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) and related techniques with the main focus on recent developments in the last decade. LC–MS records an enormous growth in recent years due to the application potential in analytical chemistry, biochemistry, pharmaceutical analysis, clinical analysis and many other fields, where the qualitative and quantitative characterization of complex organic, bioorganic and organometallic mixtures is needed. Beginners and moderately experienced LC–MS users may be confused by the number of different LC–MS systems on the market, therefore an actual overview of mass spectrometers designed for the LC–MS configuration and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) from main manufacturers is compiled here together with an independent assessment of their advantages and limitations. Current trends in terms of mass analyzers, ionization techniques, fast LC–MS, LC–MALDI-MS, ion mobility spectrometry used in LC–MS, quantitation issues specific to MS and emerging mass spectrometric approaches complementary to LC–MS are discussed as well.