Agilent Technologies Introduces Highest Sensitivity Accurate-Mass Q-TOF LC/MS System

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today introduced the Agilent 6530 Accurate-Mass Quadrupole Time-of-Flight (Q-TOF) liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) system, delivering unmatched sensitivity. Using True High Definition TOF technology, the system delivers exceptional data quality, providing superior mass accuracy, mass resolution, dynamic range, sensitivity and speed. The new 6530 is the ideal system for proteomics, metabolomics, impurity profiling, environmental screening and other demanding applications.

The 6530 Q-TOF incorporates new Agilent Jet Stream thermal gradient focusing technology, which dramatically improves system sensitivity to high femtogram levels of detection. Operating at conventional flowrates (0.1 - 2.5 mL/min), Agilent Jet Stream technology is a perfect high-flow complement to the exceptional nanoflow sensitivity of Agilent’s unique HPLC-Chip/MS.

In addition to elevated sensitivity, True High-Definition TOF technology delivers exceptional mass accuracy across a wide range of concentrations and m/z, plus resolution, and dynamic range unmatched by other benchtop TOF instruments. This occurs at very high data-acquisition rates (up to 40 spectra/second) to provide the highest information density and improve the quality and confidence of experimental results.

“We set out to deliver exceptional analytical performance for MS and MS/MS analyses for experiments demanding the combination of highest sensitivity, accurate mass measurements and speed, without the compromises required by other TOF systems and orbital trap analyzers,” said Ken Miller, Agilent’s senior global marketing director, Life Sciences LC/MS Division. “This sensitivity improvement will enable scientists performing metabolomics, proteomics and complex qualitative analyses to find and identify more, lower-abundance compounds faster and more confidently than ever.”

Agilent 6530 Q-TOF System Features

The new 6530 Q-TOF has industry-leading performance in the most important categories:

high femtogram-level sensitivity;
better than 1-ppm MS mass accuracy -- approaching that of FTMS;
better than 3-ppm MS/MS mass accuracy;
10X improvement in in-spectrum dynamic range without loss of sensitivity;
mass resolution (resolving power) of 20,000 -- not dependent on spectral acquisition rate;
fast data acquisition ( = 10 MS/MS spectra/sec) compatible with rapid resolution liquid chromatography, unlike orbital trap mass analyzers
broad mass range from m/z 25 to 20,000.
Agilent also offers application-specific software packages to take full advantage of this exceptional data quality to improve results from proteomics, metabolomics and common screening applications:

MassHunter Profiling software to find variations between two sample groups;
MassHunter Metabolite ID software to identify drug metabolites;
METLIN Personal Database, a searchable metabolomics database of more than 15,000 endogenous metabolites;
Spectrum Mill Workstation software for protein database searching; and
GeneSpring MS software, for sophisticated differential analysis and profiling of complex sample sets.
The Agilent 6530 Accurate Mass Q-TOF may be ordered now and will ship in August.